Both of these are important in regards to the uncertainty surrounding the Beowulf manuscript, as the works which it draws from or influences suggest time-frames of composition, geographic boundaries from which it could be composed, or range ( both spatial and temporal ) of influence ( i. e. when it was " popular " and where its " popularity " took it ).

Beowulf survives in a single manuscript dated on paleographical grounds to the late tenth or early eleventh century.

The earliest known owner of the Beowulf manuscript is the 16th-century scholar Laurence Nowell, after whom the manuscript is named, though its official designation is British Library, Cotton Vitellius A. XV because it was one of Robert Bruce Cotton's holdings in the Cotton Library in the middle of the 17th century.

Kevin Kiernan, professor of English at the University of Kentucky, is foremost in the computer digitalisation and preservation of the manuscript ( the Electronic Beowulf Project ), using fibre-optic backlighting to further reveal lost letters of the poem.

The poem appears in what is today called the Beowulf manuscript or Nowell Codex ( British Library MS Cotton Vitellius A. xv ), along with other works.

The Beowulf manuscript itself is mentioned in name for the first time in a letter in 1700 between George Hickes, Wanley ’ s assistant, and Wanley.

" It has been theorised that Smith failed to mention the Beowulf manuscript because of his reliance on previous catalogues or because either he had no idea how to describe it or because it was temporarily out of the codex.

Since that time, the manuscript has crumbled further, and the Thorkelin transcripts remain a prized secondary source for Beowulf scholars.

Their accuracy has been called into question, however ( e. g., by Chauncey Brewster Tinker in The Translations of Beowulf, a comprehensive survey of 19th-century translations and editions of Beowulf ), and the extent to which the manuscript was actually more readable in Thorkelin's time is unclear.

The question of whether Beowulf was passed down through oral tradition prior to its present manuscript form has been the subject of much debate, and involves more than the mere matter of how it was composed.

There is a wide array of linguistic forms in the Beowulf manuscript.

The first page of the Beowulf manuscript

* Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead is a fabricated recreation of the Old English epic Beowulf in the form of a scholastic translation of Ahmad ibn Fadlan's tenth century manuscript.

This is the manuscript that contains Beowulf.

The " discovery " of Beowulf in a single manuscript, first transcribed in 1818, came under the impetus of Romantic nationalism, after the manuscript had lain as an ignored curiosity in scholars ' collections for two centuries.

The most important manuscripts are the four great poetical codices of the late 10th and early 11th centuries, known as the Cædmon manuscript, the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Beowulf manuscript.

The first page of the Beowulf manuscript

Manuscripts are now designated by library, bookpress, and number: for example, the manuscript of Beowulf is designated Cotton Vitellius A. xv, and the manuscript of Pearl is Cotton Nero A. x.

The first page of the Beowulf manuscript

Proceeding from Parry's conclusions and adopting one of his schemata, Francis P. Magoun, Jr., argues that Beowulf likewise was created from a legacy of oral formulas inherited and extended by bards of successive generations, and the thesis is striking and compelling.

the verse of Beowulf or of The Iliad and The Odyssey was not easy to create but was not impossible for poets who had developed their talents perforce in earning a livelihood.

If Cynewulf was literate, the Beowulf poet may have been also, and so may the final redactor of The Iliad and The Odyssey.

It has been suggested that Beowulf was first composed in the 7th century at Rendlesham in East Anglia, as the Sutton Hoo ship-burial also shows close connections with Scandinavia, and also that the East Anglian royal dynasty, the Wuffings, were descendants of the Geatish Wulfings.

In Denmark, recent archaeological excavations at Lejre, where Scandinavian tradition located the seat of the Scyldings, i. e., Heorot, have revealed that a hall was built in the mid-6th century, exactly the time period of Beowulf.

When Eadgils ' mound ( to the left in the photo ) was excavated in 1874, the finds supported Beowulf and the sagas.

Early studies into Scandinavian sources / analogues proposed that Beowulf was a translation of an original Scandinavian work, but this idea has been discarded.

Paul Beekman Taylor used the Ynglingasaga as proof that the Beowulf poet was likewise working from Germanic tradition.

He suggested the Irish Feast of Bricriu as a source for Beowulf — a theory that was soon denied by Oscar Olson.

He stated that encounter between Beowulf and Unferth was parallel to the encounter between Odysseus and Euryalus in Books 7 – 8 of the Odyssey even to the point of them both giving the hero the same gift of a sword upon being proven wrong in their initial assessment of the hero's prowess.

This theory of Homer's influence on Beowulf remained very prevalent in the 1920s, but started to die out in the following decade when a handful of critics stated that the two works were merely “ comparative literature ” although Greek was known in contemporary England.

However, for at least a century, some scholars have maintained that the description of Grendel ’ s lake in Beowulf was borrowed from St. Paul ’ s vision of Hell in Homily 16 of the Blickling homilies.

Beowulf was written in England, but is set in Scandinavia.

Scholarly discussion about Beowulf in the context of the oral tradition was extremely active throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

M. H. Abrams and Stephen Greenblatt assert in their introduction to Beowulf in the Norton Anthology of English Literature that, " The poet was reviving the heroic language, style, and pagan world of ancient Germanic oral poetry it is now widely believed that Beowulf is the work of a single poet who was a Christian and that his poem reflects well-established Christian tradition.

Since none of these glimpses of poetizing without writing is intended to incorporate a signature into the epic matter, there is prima-facie evidence that Beowulf and the Homeric poems each derive from an oral tradition.

Later in his life, Beowulf is himself king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorised by a dragon whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound.

Jane Chance ( Professor of English, Rice University ) in her 1980 article " The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother " argued that there are two standard interpretations of the poem: one view which suggests a two-part structure ( i. e., the poem is divided between Beowulf's battles with Grendel and with the dragon ) and the other, a three-part structure ( this interpretation argues that Beowulf's battle with Grendel's mother is structurally separate from his battle with Grendel ).

Beowulf, a young warrior from Geatland, hears of Hroðgar's troubles and with his king's permission leaves his homeland to help Hroðgar.

Finally, Beowulf tears Grendel's arm from his body at the shoulder and Grendel runs to his home in the marshes to die.

Beowulf is again saved from his opponent's attack by his armour.

Beowulf grabs a magical sword from Grendel's mother's treasure, and with it beheads her.

Finds from Eadgils ' mound, left, excavated in 1874 at Gamla Uppsala | Uppsala In Sweden supported Beowulf and the sagas.

The majority view appears to be that people such as King Hroðgar and the Scyldings in Beowulf are based on real historical people from 6th-century Scandinavia.

Similarly, in 1971, Alistair Campbell stated that the apologue technique used in Beowulf is so infrequent in the epic tradition aside from when Virgil uses it that the poet who composed Beowulf could not have written the poem in such a manner without first coming across Virgil's writings.

Over the years Beowulf scholars have put the work of the scribes under intense scrutiny, many debate whether the scribes even held a copy as some believe they worked solely from oral dictation.

The 11th century date is due to scholars who argue that, rather than transcription of the tale from the oral tradition by a literate monk, Beowulf reflects an original interpretation of the story by the poet.

Instead, he proposed that other pieces of Germanic literature contain " kernels of tradition " from which Beowulf borrows and expands upon.

Thomas Gardner agreed with Watts, in a paper published four years later which argued that the Beowulf text is of too varied a nature to be completely constructed from formulae and themes.

An Old English poem such as Beowulf is very different from modern poetry.

In theme and function they may originate from Scandinavian and Germanic traditions of storytelling that can be seen in poems such as Beowulf.

In The Medieval Hero on Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy, Diana Slampyak claims that Jen is a medieval hero in exile.