Introduction to Beowulf -- Hwaet!

• "Beowulf is both strange and familiar"
• It has some links with ancient classic poems yet it remains an ancient artifact of culture.
• The manuscript presents us with a linguistics obstacle. Old English has different grammar than Modern English.
• Spelling will seem inconsistent, even random, in our terms.
• In Beowulf, impact was always made through oral performance.
• Within the poem there is no distinction between myth and history. Beowulf cannot accurately be described as fact or fiction.
• It is a story about "those others who were ourselves.