ABSTRACT

Of what time has spared of Anglo-Saxon poetry, the Beowulf poem is the most complete and at the same time the most important, as it presents not only a scene of the morals and customs, of the concepts and sentiments of those far remote centuries, but also because it is undoubtedly the oldest romance which now exists in any European vernacular, after the fall of the Roman Empire. [Arend gives an account of the work of Turner, Thorkelin, Conybeare and Kemble: he does not seem to have seen Kemble 1837, with its major change of opinion.] The only manuscript of the poetical product rests in the British Museum, and seems to have been written in the tenth or eleventh century, the last phase of the Anglo-Saxon poetic art [a note cites Conybeare 1826:32 and Turner 1820: III, 281 in support]. The unnamed poet, however, should be placed some centuries earlier, if it were historically proved that Beowulf had fallen in Jutland around the middle of the fifth century, and if it were not considered to be poetic licence that the singer in various places expresses himself as if he had lived at the time in which the events he sings of had taken place. Some say that this poem was composed not by one poet but from separate popular songs [a note cites Ettmüller 1840:7, 63]. However this may be, he who gave it its present form is dated back to the final part of the sixth or the beginning of the seventh century [a note cites Kemble 1835:xx, and Ettmüller 1840: 63]. He must have been a Christian, as clearly appears from many places which do not belong to the original poet or poets, but have later been interpolated [note: ‘This is indicated in various places by Ettmüller’]. Some even claim that he was one

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