Beowulf (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: n/a
- First Published: 1000
- Type of Work: Poetry
- Time of Work: Composed and written between the seventh and tenth centuries; recalls earlier era in Scandinavian history
- Setting: Denmark and southern Sweden
- Principal Characters: Beowulf, Grendel, Grendel’s mother, Hrothgar, Hygelac, Unferth, Wiglaf
- Genres: Poetry, Epic, Narrative poetry
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Folkloric or magical people, Mythology or myths, Legends, Folklore, Denmark or Danish people, Oral history, Heroes or heroism, Scandinavia or Scandinavians, Germany or German people, Middle Ages, Monsters, Sweden or Swedish people, Dragons, Feudalism, Paganism, Fables, Dark ages
- Locales: Sweden, Denmark
Seamus Heaney is Ireland’s much-beloved poet, appreciated particularly for his emotional evocation of historical events and myth in Ireland. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1995. Born in Northern Ireland, he lives in Dublin and teaches at Harvard University.
Many readers who were stumped by the required reading of the Old English poem Beowulf in high school or college will finally experience for themselves the poem’s essence by reading master poet Heaney’s dynamic translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic. By comparison, previous renditions of the ancient...
[The entire page is 2308 words long]
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