Beowulf

Beowulf is an Old English epic poem of about 3,182 alliterative lines, composed by an anonymous poet, commonly called the Beowulf poet, working chiefly in the West Saxon dialect. Scholars disagree on its date of composition, with estimates ranging from the early eighth century to around the year 1000, though the single manuscript that preserves it, the Nowell Codex, was copied between 975 and 1025 and survives in the British Library despite fire damage in 1731. Set in pagan Scandinavia of the fifth and sixth centuries, the poem follows the Geatish hero Beowulf through three battles, against the monster Grendel, against Grendel's mother, and, in his old age, against a dragon that kills him. It is considered one of the most important works of Old English literature and the foundational text of the Anglo-Saxon heroic tradition.