Tolkien has a special interest in Old English, Old Norse and historic verse and taught classes on all these topics throughout his career. His lecture on Beowulf, entitled "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" is considered a formative work on modern Beowulf studies. An excerpt from the work is copied below.
The epic influenced Tolkien’s fiction works as well, as he comments on in one of his letters.
by Kemp Malone. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1951.
This transcription of the original Beowulf manuscript (presented here in facsimile) was done by Grima Thorkelin on a trip to England in 1786. Thorkelin is the first person to make a full translation of the poem, which he rendered in German and Latin. As the original Beowulf manuscript continued to deteriorate, Thorkelin’s transcription preserved pieces of the text which would have otherwise been lost forever. Not only did he make his own translation, his work preserved the text for future translators, such as Tolkien, who worked on his Beowulf translation from 1920-1926, and which was published posthumously by Christopher in 2014.
Click here to see pages from the orignal Beowulf manuscript, made avaible by the British Library.
by Kemp Malone. Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Bagger, 1951.
This transcription of the original Beowulf manuscript (presented here in facsimile) was done by Grima Thorkelin on a trip to England in 1786. Thorkelin is the first person to make a full translation of the poem, which he rendered in German and Latin. As the original Beowulf manuscript continued to deteriorate, Thorkelin’s transcription preserved pieces of the text which would have otherwise been lost forever. Not only did he make his own translation, his work preserved the text for future translators, such as Tolkien, who worked on his Beowulf translation from 1920-1926, and which was published posthumously by Christopher in 2014.
Click here to see pages from the orignal Beowulf manuscript, made avaible by the British Library.