[(Interpretations of "Beowulf": A Critical Anthology)] [Author: R. D. Fulk] published on

by Robert D. Fulk

Interpretations of Beowulf brings together over six decades of literaryscholarship. Illustrating a variety of interpretative schools, the essays not onlydeal with most of the major issues of Beowulf criticism, including structure, style, genre, and theme, but also offer the sort of explanations of particular passagesthat are invaluable to a careful reading of a poem. This up-to-date collection ofsignificant critical approaches fills a long-standing need for a companion volumefor the study of the poem. Larger patterns in the history of Beowulf criticism arealso traceable in the chronological order of the collection.Thecontributors are Theodore M. Andersson, Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur, Jane Chance, Laurence N. de Looze, Margaret E. Goldsmith, Stanley B. Greenfield, Joseph Harris, Edward B. Irving, Jr., John Leyerle, Francis P. Magoun, Jr., M. B. McNamee, S. J., Bertha S. Phillpotts, John C. Pope, Richard N. Ringler, Geoffrey R. Russom, T. A.Shippey, and J. R. R. Tolkien.

Genres: Nonfiction, Anglo Saxon

Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Robert Dennis Fulk is a medievalist and a linguist, specializing in Germanic and Celtic languages and literatures, the history of the English language, and comparative Indo-European linguistics. He is Class of 1964 Chancellor’s Professor of English at Indiana University and teaches particularly in the areas of Old and Middle English language and literature, as well as medieval Irish and Welsh language and literature.

Reviews

[Neil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Designed to be used as a companion to Klaeber's edition of Beowulf, this collection includes 17 essays by various scholars. The most well know is Tolkien's monsters and critics. Another good one is Theodore Anderson's Tradition and Design in Beowulf,after reading and enjoying Anderson's two volumes of studies on the origin of the Nibelungen-Volsung tradition, I was interested to see that he had applied similar methods to Beowulf. Coming from the north of England, I found John Leyerle's The Interlace Stucture of Beowulf very interesting, in which the author compares Beowulf and other Old English poems to the visual arts found in the north of England.