ABSTRACT

Until now no one has investigated the possibility that Beowulf was composed at the time of its only surviving manuscript. Indeed, since the inauguration of Beowulf studies in the early nineteenth century, scholars have shown surprisingly little interest in the unique Beowulf manuscript. 1 Facsimiles have been available for the past century, seemingly belying this assertion, but to a large extent they have only impeded a real understanding of the manuscript. 2 They are surely unreliable, if not actually worthless, as primary sources for detailed palaeographical and codicological research. The curious neglect of the Beowulf manuscript is owing not so much to the early accessibility of the facsimiles, however, as to the earlier theory that relegated the manuscript itself to the status of a poor facsimile. The manuscript was universally presumed to be, at best, a reproduction of a reproduction, the last fuzzy stage of an incalculably long and complicated transmission of the original text. This theory is founded on linguistic and historical assumptions that many scholars now consider fallacious. 3 Linguistic and historical arguments can, at any rate, serve a late date of composition at least as well as an early one, and thus can dissolve the biases that have so far precluded any serious interest in the manuscript. There is reason to be interested, for the palaeographical and codicological features of the Beowulf manuscript consistently suggest that Beowulf is contemporary with its extant manuscript.