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Beowulf, a sprawling, fantastical tale of bravery, heroism, and Anglo-Saxon heraldry, is the most celebrated epic poem in the English language. The story of the great Geatish fighter Beowulf, who comes to the aid of the beleagued Hrothgar and his men, relates three epic battles: Beowulf's fight with the monster Grendel, his face-off with Grendel's vengeful mother and, after serving as King for 50 years, Beowulf's fateful clash with a fire-breathing dragon.

The protagonist Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, king of the Danes, whose great hall, Heorot, is plagued by the monster Grendel. Beowulf kills Grendel with his bare hands, then kills Grendel's mother with a giant's sword that he found in her lair. Later in his life, Beowulf becomes king of the Geats, and finds his realm terrorized by a dragon, some of whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound.

Beowulf is an epic poem that has withstood the test of time. It has been translated and studied for centuries and is a hallmark of academic curricula. It is both an adventure and a tragedy and despite some difficult language is a beautiful story of loyalty and courage in the midst of danger.

Out of the mixture of Latin and Germanic paganism and the Christianity of the Early Middle Ages has sprung one of the world's supremely great pieces of literature. J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings, delivered a famous lecture to the British Academy in 1936 in which he maintained that Beowulf was a poem all of a piece, and not (as had been suggested) a jumble of fragments for pedantic scholars to paw over.

The Epic of Beowulf dates back to CE 1000 and is considered the oldest surviving piece of work in English literature. Although written in Britain, the story of Beowulf is set in Scandinavia. The epic poem is composed in Old English and consists of 3,182 lines. It is written in the alliterative verse style, which is common for Old English poetry. The poem is about the legendary hero, Beowulf, a nobleman of the Geats. They were a North Germanic people inhabiting modern-day Gotaland in Southern Sweden.