Beowulf

Synopsis

Composed towards the end of the first millennium, the anglo-saxon poem beowulf is one of the great northern epics and a classic of european literature. In his new translation, seamus heaney has produced a work which is both true, line by line, to the original poem, and an expression, in its language and music, of something fundamental to his own creative gift. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on, physically and psychically exposed, in that exhausted aftermath.