The Beowulf Reader

Few Old English poems have been read in as many different ways as Beowulf. Its monsters, kings, funerals and feuds have prompted arguments about language, belief, literary structure and the society in which the poem took shape.

Edited by Peter S. Baker, The Beowulf Reader gathers scholarly essays that show how those interpretations developed and why they remain disputed. The collection is criticism about the poem, not an edition or translation of its text. Questions of heroism, manuscript transmission, religion and cultural setting appear through the arguments of researchers working with different kinds of evidence.