More Information

Interested in checking out other epic poems from the medieval period? Here are a few that might pique your interest from other Western countries:

El Cantar de mio Cid (Spain, ca. 1140-1207 CE)

Poetic Edda (The Codex Regius Manuscript, Iceland, manuscript dated to ca. 1270 CE)

Táin Bó Cúailnge (Book of Leinster, Ireland, manuscript dated to ca. 1160 CE). This manuscript has not been digitized yet, so the link goes to a video about the restoration and digitization project that is now underway.

Suggested Translations:

Beowulf:

Howell D. Chickering: Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition

Seamus Heaney: Beowulf (Bilingual Edition)

La Chanson de Roland:

Gerard J. Brault: Song of Roland: An Analytical Edition. Vol. II: Oxford Text and English Translation

Simon Gaunt and Karen Pratt: The Song of Roland

The Nibelungenlied:

George Henry Needler: The Nibelungenlied. Translated Into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original

References

Beowulf: Cotton MS Vitellius A XV [digital facsimile]. (ca. 1000). The British Library. http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx? ref=Cotton_MS_Vitellius_A_XV

Duggan, J. J. (Ed.). (2005). La chanson de Roland (the song of Roland): The French corpus. Brepols Publishers.

La chanson de Roland: MS Digby 23 [digital facsimile]. (ca. 1125). Bodleian Library, Oxford University. https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/79097275- ef1d-4107-85d3-e8402120f365/

Neidorf, L. (2013). Scribal errors of proper names in the Beowulf manuscript. Anglo-Saxon England, 42, 249–269.

Neidorf, L. (2017). The transmission of ’Beowulf:’ language, culture, and scribal behavior. Cornell University Press.

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 857: The St. Gall Nibelung manuscript B with the Nibelungenlied (The Song of the Nibelungs) [digital facsimile]. (ca. 1260). E-codices, SwissUniversities. http://dx.doi.org/10.5076/e-codices-csg-0857

Whobrey, W. (2018). The Nibelungenlied with the Klage (W. Whobrey, Ed., Trans.). Hackett Publishing.

Zeman, S. (2022). “Paradoxes of ‘orality:’ A comparison between Homeric oral poetry and the heroic and courtly epics in Middle High German.” In A. Ercolani & L. Lulli (Eds), Rethinking Orality II : The Mechanisms of the Oral Communication System in the Case of the Archaic Epos (pp. 177-205). De Gruyter.