1. BEOWULF

2. HISTORICAL CONTEXT

3. THE ROMAN EMPIRE

4. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The Roman Empire was the most extensive political and social structure in western civilisation for quite a long time.

5. THE ROMAN EMPIRE
It covered vast territories, including a large part of the island of “Britannia”.

6. THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

7. THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
In about 376 AD the Romans began to fight a series of battles against the ‘Goths’, today known as the ‘Gothic Wars’.

8. THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
The Goths tried to invade the empire.

9. THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
And they succeed.
The Western Roman Empire officially ended in 476 AD, when Emperor Romulus Augustus was deposed by the Germanic King Odoacer.

10. THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Notice that some Germanic tribes from today’s northern Germany and Denmark invaded the island of ‘Britannia’.
These tribes were the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes.

11. THE GERMANIC INVASIONS OF BRITAIN

12. THE GERMANIC INVASIONS OF BRITAIN
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes spoke different dialects of an old Germanic language.
Those dialects are the origin of the language we call English today.
We refer to the language they spoke as OLD ENGLISH.

13. THE ANGLO-SAXON KINGDOMS IN BRITAIN
The Germanic tribes settled in Britain and established a series of kingdoms in the new territory.

14. BEOWULF
A Narrative Poem

15. Beowulf: A Narrative Poem
It is an Old English epic poem.
It is the oldest surviving long poem in Old English.
It is also considered one of the most important works of Old English literature.

16. Beowulf: A Narrative Poem
It consists of 3182 alliterative lines.
Alliteration, the repetition of the same consonant sound at the beginning or in the middle of two or more words, is an important stylistic element of Anglo-Saxon poetry.

17. Beowulf: A Narrative Poem
It is an anonymous poem (we do not know who wrote it).
It was written between the 8th and the early 11th centuries.
It was probably a transcription of a story orally transmitted for many years.
Scholars believe that it was written by a monk in a monastery, but they can not be sure about this.

18. Beowulf: A Narrative Poem
Although it was written in England, the story that the poem tells in set in Scandinavia.
The events in the story take place in the late 5th century or early 6th century, soon after the Germanic invasions of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes of Britain began.

19. BEOWULF
An Old English Poem

20. Beowulf and Old English
Beowulf was written in Anglo-Saxon or Old English.
The Angles, Saxons and Jutes imposed their language in Britain, which was a Germanic language.

21. Beowulf and Old English
This language evolved throughout the centuries and became today’s English.
However, Old English looks and sounds very strange today even to native speakers of English.

22. This is what Old English looks and sounds like:
Read and listen to the first lines of the poem Beowulf in Old English
This is what Old English looks and sounds like:

23. BEOWULF
The Story

24. Watch and read slides 1-13 of this presentationto find out about the plot of the first part of the poem: