The Beowulf Manuscript Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library

Among the finest works of European vernacular literature from the Middle Ages, Beowulf is a fitting tide to head the Old English family of texts published in the Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library. This volume sets Beowulf in a unique and unprecedented context, For the first time in the long history of Beowulf scholarship, the poem appears alongside the other four texts from its sole surviving manuscript: the prose of The Passion of Saint Christopher, The Wonders of the East, and The Letter of Alexander the Great to Aristotle, and (following Beowulf) the verse of Judith. First-time readers as well as established scholars can now gain new insights into Beowulfùand the four other textsùby approaching each in its original setting. The volume also includes, from a lost manuscript, the fragmentary poem The Fight at Finnsburg, which recounts a tragic conflict alluded to in a resonant and memorable passage of Beowulf. Could a fascination with the monstrous have motivated a compiler, working over a thousand years ago, to pull together this diverse grouping into a single manuscript? The prose translation by Fulk, based on the most recent editorial understanding, allows readers to rediscover th