Greene Hamlet is the home of Resources for the Study of Beowulf, the Old English poem.
Only one copy of the Beowulf manuscript has survived to intrigue and inspire students of literature, historians, writers, artists, and film-makers. There is a lot more than battles and heroic deeds in Beowulf. The interested reader will want to learn more about the origin of the story, the tension between pagan and Christian elements, stoicism and tragedy, the motivations that drive people to do noteworthy deeds, and works that have been influenced by Beowulf. I've selected the best resources I've found on the Internet, along with some books and other resources with related information about Anglo-Saxon and Medieval studies, the language of Beowulf, Sir Robert Cotton, Sutton Hoo, and what you can find in a college or university library.
My "Beowulf" pages were formerly located at the Knowledge Center, University of Nevada, Reno, and before that, at the D. Hiden Ramsey Library, University of North Carolina at Asheville. It started with a library orientation in 1998. As long as it remains useful, I'll keep it going.
Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631), collected manuscripts and antiquities. His private library included the Lindisfarne Gospels, two copies of the Magna Carta, the Beowulf manuscript, and other treasures. Cotton and his former teacher, William Camden founded the Society of Antiquaries around 1586. He was influential in the antiquarian movement of early Stuart England, which sought to investigate the historical origins of the British people. He was also a notable political figure and his career is an interesting study in the relationship between historical scholarship and national politics.
Cotton arranged his Library for convenience, not according to modern cataloging standards. The identity of items in his collection was indicated by the "press" or bookcase in which it was located.
Atop each press stood a bust of a Roman emperor. The Beowulf manuscript was bound in a codex (an early type of book in which manuscripts were bound into book form, rather than rolled up) which is still referenced as Cotton MS.Vitellius A.xv. It was the fifteenth item on the first shelf of the press under the bust of Vitellius in the Cotton Library.
It's hard to visualize Cotton's Library, and easy to create an inaccurate picture in one's imagination. Fortunately, one book has a diagram of Cotton's Library: Sir Robert Cotton, 1586-1631, by Kevin Sharpe. Google Books gives us an opportunity to view the diagram in its preview pages for this book without borrowing it from a library.
The Google Books preview is embedded below. On pages 71-72, there is a description of the library and the simple line drawing that illustrates its arrangement!
Google Books provided the code to embed page 72, which contains the layout diagram. However, the display is perversely unstable in that page 72 may disappear if the scrollbar is used. Why bother providing code for an iframe if it displays more than the requested page and then hides that page behind a notice to buy the book. What's up with that? As a matter of record, I DID buy the book from Amazon.
The Illustrated Beowulf by Jake has been restored to this site. The parody provides a student’s perspective on the poem and the project assignment from hell. The result is way too funny to leave out, even though half the students who view it will be too young to remember the "stars" of the retold story. The cast includes Bill Clinton, Pope John Paul II, the Cookie Monster, and other key figures from 1998. I promise it will have you rolling on the floor laughing.
I temporarily deleted this gem when I moved my Beowulf web pages into WordPress because it involved recreating and updating 20 pages with legacy HTML code. It was worth it, but took two mugs of Starbucks Sumatra to accomplish.
Enjoy!
The Sutton Hoo burial mound was excavated in 1939. Treasures from the same time period as the Beowulf story were discovered here. Because of their beauty and significance, many photos of the artifacts are available on flickr. Here is a sample using my new toy, Yahoo Pipes. Because the slideshow shows search results for [...]
Resources for the Study of Beowulf has been honored by receiving a "Best of the Web" award from Shmoop. This recognition is especially meaningful because it reflects the opinions of students and teachers who use the site and took the time to vote. Your support is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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For instant access to wonderful lectures by Oxford professors check out the Oxford University English pages and get their Medieval Podcasts. You won’t be disappointed!
There is a handy list of all Oxford English Department podcasts and Dr. Stuart D. Lee’s Medieval Podcasts are also available from iTunes U as well as from [...]
With a little imagination and some furry accessories, you can put together a Beowulf costume for Halloween. There are quite a few websites with information and ideas about Early Medieval Costumes, Viking Resources for the Re-enactor, Ravensgard Clothing, Costuming and Textiles, and Some Clothing of the Middle Ages. For more, check out Google’s directory of [...]
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