Beowulf - Authorship and Date

Authorship and Date

Beowulf was written in England, but is set in Scandinavia. It has variously been dated to between the 8th and the early 11th centuries. It is an epic poem told in historical perspective; a story of epic events and of great people of a heroic past. Although its author is unknown, its themes and subject matter are rooted in Germanic heroic poetry, in Anglo-Saxon tradition recited and cultivated by Old English poets called scops.

Opinion differs as to whether the composition of the poem is contemporary with its transcription, or whether the poem was composed at an earlier time (possibly as one of the Bear's Son Tales) and orally transmitted for many years, and then transcribed at a later date. Lord (1960:) felt strongly the manuscript represents the transcription of a performance, though likely taken at more than one sitting. Kiernan (1996) argues on the basis of paleographical and codicological evidence, that the poem is contemporary with the manuscript. Kiernan's reasoning has in part to do with the much-discussed political context of the poem: it has been held by most scholars, until recently, that the poem was composed in the 8th century on the assumption that a poem eliciting sympathy for the Danes could not have been composed by Anglo-Saxons during the Viking Ages of the 9th and 10th centuries, and that the poem celebrates the namesakes of 8th Century Mercian Kings.

Kiernan argues against an 8th-century provenance because this would still require that the poem be transmitted by Anglo-Saxons through the Viking Age, holds that the paleographic and codicological evidence encourages the belief that Beowulf is an 11th-century composite poem, and states that Scribe A and Scribe B are the authors and that Scribe B is the more poignant of the two. This matches with the royal house of England in the early 11th Century being Danish, making the poem politically compatible with this time period.

The view of J. R. R. Tolkien is that the poem retains a much too genuine memory of Anglo-Saxon paganism to have been composed more than a few generations after the completion of the Christianisation of England around AD 700. Tolkien's conviction that the poem dates to the 8th century is defended by Tom Shippey (2007).

The celebration of deeds of ancient Danish and Swedish heroes, the poem beginning with a tribute to the royal line of Danish kings, but written in the dominant literary dialect of Anglo-Saxon England, for a number of scholars points to the 11th century reign of Canute, the Danish king whose empire included all of these areas, and whose primary place of residence was in England, as the most likely time of the poem's creation, the poem being written as a celebration of the king's heroic royal ancestors, perhaps intended as a form of artistic flattery by one of his English courtiers.

A suggestion made by John Mitchell Kemble (1849) and defended by Jäching (1976) puts a terminus post quem of the early 9th century on the Finnesburg episode at least. Kemble identifies the character of Hnæf son of Hoc with the historical Alamannic nobleman Hnabi son of Huoching (d. ca. 788), worked into the earlier episode set in Frisia around AD 800 at the earliest.

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.