Features an introduction and a commentary that incorporates the scholarship on "Beowulf" that has appeared since 1950. This work includes detailed bibliographic guidance to discussion of textual cruces, as well as to modern and contemporary critical concerns. It also addresses aids to pronunciation and advances in the study of the poem's language.

R.D. Fulk is Chancellor's Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington. --Book Jacket.

Most Beowulf scholars have held either that the poems' minor episodes are more or less based on incidents in Scandinavian history or at least that they entail nothing of the fabulous or monstrous. Beowulf and the Illusion of History contends that, like the poem's Grendelkin episodes, certain minor episodes involve monsters and contain motifs of the "Bear's Son" folktale. In the Finn Episode the monsters are to be taken as physically present in the story as we have it, while in the mention of the hero's fight with Daeghrefn and perhaps in the accounts of the fight with Ongenbeow, the principal foes, though originally monsters, appear now more like ordinary humans. The inference permits the elucidation of passages hitherto obscure and indicates that the capability of the Beowulf poet as a "maker" is greater than has been thought. John F. Vickrey, is Professor of English, Emeritus, at Lehigh University.

Two original essays and 16 published since 1950 offer a comprehensive view of Cynewulf, his language, and his poetry. The collection contains important new statements on dates, provenance, and canon by R.D. Fulk and Patrick W. Conner, four influential essays that thoroughly explore Cynewulf's runic signature and poetic style, and major contributions to our understanding of the four signed poems of Cynewulf, "Fates of the Apostles, Christ II, Juliana, and Elene." Three essays are devoted to each of these poems, and the essays themselves exemplify a broad range of approaches to this highly elusive Anglo-Saxon poet. Representative essays include J.E. Cross, "Cynewulf's Traditions about the Apostles in The Fates of the Apostles," George Hardin Brown, "The Descent-Ascent Motif in "Christ II" of Cynewulf," Donald G. Bzdyl, "Juliana: Cynewulf's Dispeller of Delusion," Catharine A. Regan, "Evangelicism as the Informing Principle of Cynewulf's "Elene,"" and Dolores Warwick Frese, "The Art of Cynewulf's Runic Signatures." The volume complements existing book-length treatments of the subject and will be welcome to scholars and students who need the foundations of Cynewulf scholarship at their fingertips. Index.

Set against the framework of modern political concerns, Treason: Medieval and Early Modern Adultery, Betrayal, and Shame considers the various forms of treachery in a variety of sources, including literature, historical chronicles, and material culture creating a complex portrait of the development of this high crime.

First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.