The Dating of Beowulf / / ed. by Colin Chase.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Toronto Press eBook-Package Archive 1933-1999
• MitwirkendeR: Boyle, Leonard E.,; Butler, Sharon,; Cable, Thomas,; Callander Murray, Alexander,; Cameron, Angus,; Chase, Colin,; Clemoes, Peter,; Crandell Amos, Ashley,; Di Paolo Healey, Antonette,; Frank, Roberta,; Goffart, Walter,; Howe, Nicholas,; Kiernan, Kevin S.,; McTurk, R.W.,; Page, R.I.,; Pope, John C.,; Stanley, E.G.,; Waite, Gregory,
• HerausgeberIn: Chase, Colin,
• Place / Publishing House: Toronto : : University of Toronto Press, , [2016]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2016
• Language: English
• Series: Toronto Old English Studies
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (230 p.)

The date of Beowulf, debated for almost a century, is a small question with large consequences. Does the poem provide us with an accurate if idealized view of early Germanic culture? Or is it rather a creature of nostalgia and imagination, born of the desire of a later age to create for itself a glorious past? If we cannot decide when, between the 5th and 11th centuries, the poem was composed, we cannot distinguish what elements in Beowulf belong properly to the history of material culture, to the history of myth and legend, to political history, or to the development of the English literary imagination.This book represents both individual and concerted attempts to deal with this important question, and presents one of the most important inconclusions in the study of Old English. The contributors raise so many doubts, turn up so much new and disturbing information, dismantle so many long-accepted scholarly constructs that Beowulf studies will never be the same: henceforth every discussion of the poem and its period will begin with reference to this volume.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Editor’s preface -- Abbreviations -- The Dating of Beowulf -- Opinions on the Date of Beowulf, 1815–1980 -- The Eleventh-Century Origin of Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript -- The Nowell Codex and the Poem of Beowulf -- A Reconsideration of the Language of Beowulf -- Metrical Style as Evidence for the Date of Beowulf -- Hetware and Hugas: Datable Anachronisms in Beowulf -- Beowulf, the Danish Invasions, and Royal Genealogy -- The Audience of Beowulf and the Vikings -- Skaldic Verse and the Date of Beowulf -- Variation in Beowulf and the Poetic Edda: A Chronological Experiment -- Saints’ Lives, Royal Lives, and the Date of Beowulf -- Style as the Criterion for Dating the Composition of Beowulf -- On the Date of Composition of Beowulf -- The Date of Beowulf: Some Doubts and No Conclusions -- Afterword: The Uses of Uncertainty: On the Dating of Beowulf -- Index