How does the Old English poem Beowulf work? How did centuries of singers and audiences – and scholars like Tolkien – keep in motion this cunningly crafted elegy, with its monsterous matchups and its chilling contemplation of dying? What literary kin had Beowulf, then and now? We’ll reply to these queries, examing a crucial poem that never disappoints in its orb of gleaming materiality and in its immediate manuscript and language contexts. Topics will include how the poem creates poetic space, voices itself, and how we, in our times, can reconstruct, animate, and perform contemporary versions of Beowulf.
