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Beowulf is a 3,182 line alliterative poem which was written in Old English and which has been translated in various ways many dozens of times in the past 200 years. The story is of a very brave and strong Geatish (Swedish) hero named Beowulf who travels to King Hrothgar's castle Heorot in Denmark and kills the ferocious monster Grendel by tearing Grendel's arm off with his bare hands. He subsequently slays Grendel's mother by cutting off her head in her own cave using her own giant sword. Fifty years later he is killed in a battle in which he and his protege Wiglaf kill a fire-breathing dragon. The original author of the poem is unknown and the original date of composition is in dispute (estimates range from about 700 A.D. to 1025 A.D.). The original manuscript from about 1025 A.D. survives in the British Library in a composite codex known as Cotton Vitellius A. xv (which was stored in the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton until it was damaged by fire in 1731). Old English scholars are in almost unanimous agreement that Beowulf is the greatest literary monument surviving from the Anglo-Saxon period. Here are the first three lines of the poem in the original Old English: Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum,/ þeodcyninga, þrym gefrunon,/ hu ða æþelingas ellen fremedon. And here is a translation of these lines into modern English from the Roy M. Liuzza translation: Listen!/ We have heard of the glory in bygone days/ of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes,/ how those noble lords did lofty deeds. The lofty deeds of one lord in particular, Beowulf, are the theme of this great epic poem.
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