Personally, I never understood why Beowulf was such a classic piece of literature. Yeah, it’s old, but does age alone create a classic? For instance, Shakespeare is an antiquity but he is also one of the greatest masters of the English language who has ever lived. On the other hand Beowulf, no one knows who wrote it, it’s a mediocre and incomplete story, and it’s one of many bland epics from the Anglo-Saxon period. Beowulf is often referred to as the first important work of literature in English, even though it was written in Old English, an ancient form of the language that slowly evolved into the English now spoken. Compared to modern English, Old English is heavily Germanic, with little influence from Latin or French. As English history developed, after the French Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxons in 1066, Old English was gradually broadened by offerings from those languages. Thus modern English is derived from a number of sources.
Steven, Howard, and Stephen Jay Greenblatt. “Beowulf.” The Middle Ages. New York: W.W. Norton &
Company. 2008. 77-81. Print.
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