Little indeed is known of the origin of English Literature, though it is reasonable to assume that verse of an extemporary kind was composed long before the period of the earliest written records and that we can be certain that poetry made its appearance long before the first prose was written down. It is important from the outset to remember that the extant remains of Old English Literature ha…
The Old English poem known in the modern era as Beowulf consists of some 3182 lines of alliterative verse. The poem is preserved on folios 129r to 198v of a unique and badly damaged Anglo-Saxon manuscript sometimes called the ‘Nowell Codex’ and now known by its shelf mark as the London, British Library, MS. Cotton Vitellius A.xv. The text was copied by two dif…