BEOWULF

• Beowulf , written in Old English sometime before the tenth century A.D., it describes the adventures of a great Scandinavian warrior of the sixth century.
• Beowulf is the oldest surviving epic in British literature.
• There is only one manuscript of Beowulf exists today. This copy survived both the wholesale destruction of religious artifacts during the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII and a disastrous fire which destroyed the library of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631).
• Beowulf is written in an Anglo-Saxon Language (sometimes called Old English), but the the story does not take place in England at all. It is about some of the ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons, tribes who lived in countries that are now called Denmark and Sweden.
• The Anglo-Saxon people began to settle in Britain around 450 A.D. They came from Europe, mainly from the countries we now call Germany and Denmark.

The poem still bears the scars of the fire, visible at the upper left corner of the photograph. The Beowulf manuscript is now housed in the British Library, London.

This week will be reading Beowulf translated by Burton Raffel Epic 2 The Arrival of the Hero

The Adventures of Beowulf

                                                        an Adaptation from the Old English

                                                        by Dr. David BreedenIllustrated 

                                                        by Randy Grochoske

Europe nowadays.

The Angles, Saxons and Jutes came to Britain around 450 A.D.(see map below). 

Some Franks and Frisians also came, as well as some smaller tribes.

The people already living in Britain were called the Britons.
They were a Celtic people, like many of the Scots, Irish and Welsh today.
The Anglo-Saxon invaders drove most of the Britons back until they lived
only in the areas now called Cornwall, 

Wales and Scotland.

This map shows where different tribes from Europe settled in Britain.

It is from the names of these tribes that we get some of the names of parts of Britain 

that we still use today:

e.g.

East Angles - East Anglia
East Saxons - Essex
South Saxons - Sussex

Even the word England comes from Angle-land.