Beowulf by Anonymous – SOLD OUT

This Great Books class is sold out. Please email human@unc.edu with your First & Last name, and phone number to be added to the waitlist.

featuring H.M. Cushman, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature

One of the first written stories in the English language

—As a social document this great epic poem is invaluable—reflecting a feudal world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory, life and death. As a work of art, it is unique. Beowulf rings with beauty, power, and artistry that have kept it alive for a thousand years. —Signet Classics

—The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. —W. W. Norton

—A work of the greatest imaginative vitality, a masterpiece where the structuring of the tale is as elaborate as the beautiful contrivances of its language. Its narrative elements may belong to a previous age but as a work of art it lives in its own continuous present, equal to our knowledge of reality in the present time.—The New York Review

—Magnificent, breathtaking….Heaney has created something imperishable and great that is stainless—stainless, because its force as poetry makes it untouchable by the claw of literalism: it lives singly, as an English language poem. —The Guardian

—Beowulf is among my most valued sources. It is a work of genius, rare and surprising in the period, and it is worth studying. —J.R.R. Tolkien

Meeting Date: Tuesdays, October 5 and 12

Cost: $40, includes a copy of the book shipped to your home

Register online or call 919.962.1544