Beowulf - Edited, With Introd., Bibliography, Notes, Glossary, And Appendices

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. THE present edition of the Beowulf was undertaken primarily with the view of furnishing the editors own students with more help than could be obtained from existing English editions, but it is hoped that it may find acceptance with a larger public. During recent years the poem has been subjected to a minute scrutiny by experts whose researches have thrown a great deal of fresh light on obscure points both in the interpretation of the text and in the matter of origins. Many of the results of these investigations are embodied in the following pages. The preparation of the text has involved more arduous labour than perhaps any other part of the book every departure from the MS. has been carefully considered, and duly recorded in each case in the textual footnotes. The Introduction presents in outline, but more fully than in other editions, the more important of the facts established and the theories hasarded about the poem. These facts and theories the Bibliography will enable the student to follow up in detail discussion of contested points is excluded from the scope of this edition. The Notes give what is essential to the understanding of the text and no more, though all the chief difficulties are treated with some fulness. The Glossary is complete as regards both forms and references, save for one or two very common words, e.g. and, se etc., and thus will be useful to the advanced student. It was first prepared independently and then checked by comparison with the glossaries of Holt- viii Preface hausens and Schiickings editions, from both of which it differs in several respects, and afterwards with Holders glossary. In the Appendices are brought togethermaterials not always easily accessible to English students, which nevertheless are of importance for the study of the great epic. The editor asks indulgence for errors which may have crept unnoticed into the book, the preparation of which has been single-handed and carried on inter mittently in such intervals of leisure as could be spared in the midst of other occupations. His best thanks are due to the Printer at the University Press for the care with which the book has been printed. Lastly, he wishes to record his great indebtedness to and admiration for the work of those scholars who have done so much for the study of the Beowulf. Thanks to the labours of Miillenhoff, Moller, Bugge, Sarrazin, Sievers, Holthausen, Schucking, Trautmann, Klaeber, von Grienberger and many another, that study is now easier and surer than it was when Kemble and Thorpe brought out their editions. That the authorities in this field are almost to a man Germans, though perhaps regrettable from the English point of view, is no matter for wonder. The Beowulf, oldest and most famous of the early epics of the Germanic races, links the literature of England with the literatures of Scandinavia and Germany, and is of supreme value for the study of Germanic origins. MANCHESTER, August, 1910. W. J. SEDGEFIELD. IX PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE exhaustion of the first impression affords a welcome opportunity of correcting the more obvious of the defects inseparable from the preparation of the first full English edition of so important and much discussed a text as the Beowulf...