Old English literature, though more abundant than literature of the continent before AD 1000, is nonetheless scanty. In his supplementary article to the 1935 posthumous edition of Blight’s Anglo-Saxon Reader, Dr. James Hulbert writes: In such historical conditions, an incalculable amount of the writings of the Anglo-Saxon period perished. What they contained, how important they […]

Textological analysis shows that the epic poem of Beowulf (the title itself is an editorial convenience – the manuscript copy of the poem is untitled) probably existed in written form by the middle of the 7th century, so it belongs to the oldest records of the English literature. It is the longest surviving poem in […]