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Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript
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Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript Paperback - 1997

by Kevin S. Kiernan

From the publisher

The story of Beowulf and his hard-fought victory over the monster Grendel has captured the imagination of readers and listeners for a millennium. The heroic Anglo-Saxon story survives to the world in one eleventh-century manuscript that was badly burned in 1731, and in two eighteenth-century transcriptions of the manuscripts.
Kevin S. Kiernan, one of the world's foremost Beowulf scholars, has studied the manuscript extensively with the most up-to-date methods, including fiber-optic backlighting and computer digitization. This volume reprints Kiernan's earlier study of the manuscript, in which he presented his novel conclusions about the date of Beowulf. It also offers a new Introduction in which the author describes the value of electronic study of Beowulf, and a new Appendix that lists all the letters and parts of letters revealed by backlighting.
This important volume will be a must-read not only for the scholar of early English history and literature, but for all those who are interested in practical applications of the new technologies.

From the rear cover

When this book first appeared in 1981, most scholars agreed that Beowulf was an early eighth-century poem and few of them had shown any interest in the early eleventh-century manuscript that preserved it. Today they disagree widely, dating the poem anywhere between the eighth and the eleventh century. The single surviving manuscript in The British Library has become a new focus of interest as historians, linguists, literary critics, theorists, palaeographers, and codicologists all debate issues relating to the unique physical context in which the poem survives. With its extensive and seminal discussion of these issues, Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript remains at the centre of these debates.

Details

  • Title Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript
  • Author Kevin S. Kiernan
  • Binding Paperback
  • Edition Revised Edition
  • Pages 360
  • Volumes 1
  • Language ENG
  • Publisher University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor
  • Date 1997-01
  • Illustrated Yes
  • ISBN 9780472084128 / 0472084127
  • Weight 1.2 lbs (0.54 kg)
  • Dimensions 8.8 x 5.9 x 1.1 in (22.35 x 14.99 x 2.79 cm)
  • Themes
    • Chronological Period: Medieval (500-1453) Studies
    • Cultural Region: British
  • Library of Congress subjects British Library, Paleography, English
  • Library of Congress Catalog Number 96031025
  • Dewey Decimal Code 829.3

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