Anonymous (Old English poet)
1 book analyzed
Biography
The author of Beowulf is unknown. The poem survives in a single manuscript — British Library Cotton MS Vitellius A.xv — copied around 1000 CE by two scribes, but the poem itself was likely composed much earlier, perhaps as early as the 7th or 8th century. Whether it was composed orally and later transcribed, or composed in writing by a literate poet working within oral traditions, is one of the most debated questions in medieval studies. What is clear: the poet was a Christian writing about a pagan past, deeply versed in both Germanic heroic tradition and Latin biblical learning. The poem is set in Scandinavia — Denmark and southern Sweden — but was composed in England, probably in an Anglo-Saxon court. The poet never names himself, which was standard for Old English poetry. The manuscript survived a devastating fire in 1731 at Ashburnham House that destroyed or damaged hundreds of manuscripts in the Cotton library; the edges of the Beowulf manuscript are charred, and some readings are only recoverable from transcriptions made before the fire.