Beowulf, the name of an Anglo-Saxon poem of epic character, which relates the heroic deeds of Beowulf, prince of the Geatas, especially his struggle with the Grendel, a grisly monster of the fens and moors, as well as its mother; and a long time after with a dragon, which victory cost him his life.
The only manuscript of the poem in existence is an inaccurately written parchment codex now in the British Museum, which once belonged to Sir Robert Cotton, and was much injured by the fire in the Cottonian Library in 1731. The poem consists of 6356 short alliterative lines, and is the oldest large poem in any Teutonic tongue. Its language, according to Mr T. Arnold, is neither Northumbrian nor East Anglian, but with some slight Northumbrian exceptions, the pure literary Anglo-Saxon of Wessex; and the poem must be referred to a very early stage of Anglo-Saxon culture, when Christianity, though it had been introduced, had not yet supplanted the fierce joy in fighting, in song, and feasting and seafaring, so characteristic of the old Norse heathendom. The poem in its present form may be assigned with some degree of confidence to an early period in the 8th century; but it is a hazardous matter to determine whether it was originally carried by our forefathers from the Continent, and afterwards rewritten and worked up into literary form by a late Anglo-Saxon editor, or was entirely due to the invention of an early but native Anglo-Saxon poet. Of course the poem, as we have it, has undergone considerable alterations, and contains many interpolations. Mr Sweet's opinion is that it is a poem composed before the Teutonic conquest of England. 'The localities are purely continental: the scenery is laid among the Goths of Sweden and the Danes; in the episodes the Swedes, Frisians, and other continental tribes appear, while there is no mention of England, or the adjoining countries and nations. It is evident that the poem, as a whole, cannot have been composed directly from the current traditions of the period: the variety of incidents, their artistic treatment, and the episodes introduced, show that the poet had some foundation to work upon, that there must have been short epic songs about the exploits of Beowulf current among the people, which he combined into a whole. In the poem, as it stands, we can easily distinguish four elements: the prologue, the two chief exploits of Beowulf against Grendel and the dragon, and the episodes.'
Ettmüller and Müllenhoff believe the work to be an amalgam of several poems, the latter maintaining that it is made up of four distinct lays or Heldensagen, written by at least four hands, the introduction again being due to a still later writer; while each lay has been enlarged by later interpolations, which are detailed with all the certainty and boldness of the true German critic. This ingenious reasoning wears on its face, in the absence of direct contrary evidence, a delusive air of accuracy. It is a matter of great difficulty to determine how much history and how much romance or myth there is in the old poem of Beowulf. Thorpe thought it was a metrical paraphrase of an heroic saga, composed in the southwest of Sweden in the old common language of the north, and probably brought to this country during the sway of the Danish dynasty. Kemble, in his edition of the text (1833), assumed the leading characters of the poem to be historical, and assigned the events to the commencement of the 5th century, but in his translation four years later he assigned the incidents of the poem to the poetical cycle of the Angles, seeing in the central figure a god rather than a man with superhuman attributes of defending, protecting, and redeeming the people. Grein and Mr T. Arnold discover in the poem an historical foundation, the former considering that it treats of actions done among the Danes in Denmark, the latter recognising in King Hygelac the historical King Chocilagus spoken of by Gregory of Tours, as well as in the Gesta Regum Francorum. Mr Haigh is the originator of a bold but untenable theory which claims for the poem a purely English origin, as the composition of a Northumbrian scop familiar with the scenes described, and identifies many of the places mentioned in the poem with localities on the Yorkshire coast. With this Professor Henry Morley substantially agrees, thinking that the poem was originally a Danish tale made English by a poet who lived in the Whitby district, and who, when he described or suggested scenery, produced impressions from the only scenery he knew. Professor Earle believes that the poem is Anglian, and was written in the reign of Offa, king of Mercia, between the years 755 and 794, its aim being to set up an heroic example as the institution of a prince. The central figure is mythical, but in all points exemplary, and particularly resembling King Offa. He thinks further that the saga was probably written originally in Latin, and most likely came out of Frankland to the hands of the English poet.
Professor Skeat, in the Journal of Philology (No. 29, 1886), assumes Beowulf to have been a real hero, and Grendel a bear, and sees in the poem a glorified poetical account of some great fight with a bear that impressed itself on the popular imagination. The name Grendel means 'the grinder,' and Béo-wulf, literally the 'bee-wolf,' a name scarcely applicable to any animal but a bear. The former is a name that might well be given to a bear, while the latter might be a nickname for a notable slayer of bears in particular. The learned professor makes out a strong case, but his interpretation is too literal and realistic, and it is hard to conceive that the poetic imagination could have worked so richly round so simple and ordinary a story. German scholars like Müllenhoff have read the whole story into myth, and harmonised it with the legends of nature that form part of the old northern mythology. Simrock, again, recognises the god Thor under the mask of Beowulf, and compares the dragon-fight to Thor's final battle with the Midgard snake, at the close of which he perishes of his venom. It is most likely that in the action of the poem, to some extent at least, real events are described, transformed though they may be into legendary marvels; yet the manners and customs of the old makers of England are accurately painted withal, and its descriptions of wild nature, with its half-spiritual aspects, mark the beginning of what was yet to be a characteristic note in the latest English poetry. The old heathenism, with its strong nature-worship and fatalism, is but thinly veiled by the Christianising touch of its old English editor. Indeed such a passage as that in which Grendel is described as a descendant of Cain, is an example of an interpolation that corresponds but indifferently with the general heathen colouring of the poem. The poem was first edited by Thorkelin (Copenhagen, 1815), next by Kemble (London, 1833), Thorpe (1855), Thomas Arnold (1876), and Harrison and Sharp (1883). German editions are those of Heyne (1863); Grein (1867; re-edited by Wülexer, 1881); Zupitza, an autotype of the MS. (1882); Möller (Kiel, 1883); and Holder (Freiburg, 1884). Translations in English are those of Kemble (1837), Thorpe, and Arnold, the last two accompanying editions of the texts, Luysden's (1881) in ballad metre, Garnett's (1883), and William Morris's (1895). German translations are Ettmüller's (1840) and Simrock's (1869). See Dederich, Historische und Geographische Studien zum Beowulf-lied (1877); Mr Sweet's 'Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon Poetry' in vol. ii. (1871) of Hazlitt's edition of Warton's History of English Poetry; vol. i. of Henry Morley's English Writers (1887); Prof. Earle's Decds of Beowulf (1892); and A. J. Wyatt's edition (with textual notes, 1894).