Beowulf

The Beowulf Poet · 940 CE–1010 · England

Originally Beowulf (Old English) · translated by Seamus Heaney

Why it matters

A hero crosses the sea to kill a monster, then its mother, and returns home to a long, celebrated reign that is tested one last time, decades later, when a dragon's disturbed hoard demands a final reckoning. The lone surviving Old English epic, elegiac about its own vanished pagan world, and English literature's deepest root.

At a glance

An alien heroic world and digressive structure, though Heaney's translation reads with muscular clarity.