Beowulf, the primary epic of the English language, is a powerful heroic poem eloquently expressive of the Anglo-Saxon culture that produced it. In this beautiful book a designer, a poet, and a specialist in Anglo-Saxon literature recreate Beowulf for a modern audience. Interweaving evocative images, a new interpretation in verse, and a running commentary that helps clarify the action and setting of the poem as well as the imagery, the book brings new life to this ancient masterpiece.
Randolph Swearer's oblique and allusive images create an archaic, mysterious atmosphere by...

This magnificent new edition, which includes relevant shorter texts and key illustrations, is designed specifically to help those who, while already enjoying some acquaintance with Old English, come to Beowulf for the first time.

Fred C. Robinson is known throughout the world for some of the most original and stimulating work on Old English literature and language published in recent times. The Tomb of Beowulf collects thirty seven of his essays and three substantial new articles. The book is informed by the author's preoccupation with meaning, context and language and their subtle interactions. Its contents are equally characterized by readability and scholarship, and by learning and wit.

The study and the understanding of Anglo-Saxon history, literature and culture depends on the presentation of unique manuscripts as modern printed editions. This transformation raises problems of interpetation. The reader studying a printed edition cannot know what the text is without some understanding of the editorial process by which the work came into being. How much, for example, of the language, punctuation and spacing has authorial foundation, and how much is scribal or editorial accretion? How much of the original manuscript context has been lost - and with it its share of the text's...