Béowulf is the longest and best-known Anglo-Saxon heroic poem. It has come to us in a single manuscript kept at the British Library, the Cotton Vitellius. The poem has 3182 lines in alliterative verse and was composed between the 7^th and the 10^th century for a Christian audience on the basis of the Anglo-Saxon tradition. Béowulf balances two periods in the life of the hero whose name it was called after: its youth exploits, when at the court of the Danish king Hrothgar he slew Grendel, a man-eating giant devastating Hrothgar’s domains, and his mother afterwards; then his last fight as an elderly king of the Geats against a dragon that threatens his people. J. R. R. Tolkien had a prominent role in Béowulf’s study and critics as he published a seminal article entitled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, which was republished with other essays of his in the collection The Monsters and the Critics and other Essays. Conversely, Béowulf was a important source of inspiration for Tolkien: some narrative elements of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings originate in it.

Tolkien used this fragment as an example in his essay On translating Beowulf, also published in The Monsters and the Critics and other Essays. Here he analyses the prosody, meter and diction extensively and provides a translation in a modern form alliterative verse, that we reproduce here.

The text’s transcription emulates the Insular script, a style of the Latin alphabet of Irish origin, used in most Old English manuscripts. We made use of Peter S. Baker’s typeface Beowulf1.