Editing Beowulf (section)

== Authorship and date ==
The dating of ''Beowulf'' has attracted considerable scholarly attention; opinion differs as to whether it was first written in the 8th century, whether it was nearly contemporary with its 11th-century manuscript, and whether a proto-version (possibly a version of the "[[Bear's Son Tale]]") was orally transmitted before being transcribed in its present form.<ref name="Frank 2007">{{cite journal |last=Frank |first=Roberta |title=A Scandal in Toronto: "The Dating of "Beowulf" " a Quarter Century On |journal=Speculum |date=October 2007 |volume=82 |issue=4 |pages=843–864 |doi=10.1017/S0038713400011313 |jstor=20466079|s2cid=162726731 }}</ref> [[Albert Lord]] felt strongly that the manuscript represents the transcription of a performance, though likely taken at more than one sitting.{{sfn|Lord|2000|p=200}} [[J. R. R. Tolkien]] believed that the poem retains too genuine a memory of [[Anglo-Saxon paganism]] to have been composed more than a few generations after the completion of the [[Christianisation of England]] around AD 700,{{sfn|Tolkien|1997}} and Tolkien's conviction that the poem dates to the 8th century has been defended by scholars including [[Tom Shippey]], [[Leonard Neidorf]], Rafael J. Pascual, and [[Robert D. Fulk]].<ref>{{cite book |first=Tom |last=Shippey |author-link=Tom Shippey |contribution=Tolkien and the Beowulf-poet |title=Roots and Branches |year=2007 |publisher=Walking Tree Publishers |isbn=978-3-905703-05-4}}</ref><ref name="link.springer.com">{{cite journal |last1=Neidorf |first1=Leonard |last2=Pascual|first2=Rafael |title=The Language of Beowulf and the Conditioning of Kaluza's Law |year=2014 |journal=Neophilologus |volume=98 |issue=4 |pages=657–673 |doi=10.1007/s11061-014-9400-x|s2cid=159814058 }}</ref><ref name="Fulk 2007 304–324">{{cite news |last=Fulk |first=R. D. |title=Old English Meter and Oral Tradition: Three Issues Bearing on Poetic Chronology |jstor=27712658 |year=2007 |journal=Journal of English and Germanic Philology |volume=106 |pages=304–324}}</ref> An analysis of several Old English poems by a team including Neidorf suggests that ''Beowulf'' is the work of a single author, though other scholars disagree.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Neidorf |first1=Leonard |last2=Krieger |first2=Madison S. |last3=Yakubek |first3=Michelle |last4=Chaudhuri |first4=Pramit |last5=Dexter |first5=Joseph P. |date=2019-04-08 |title=Large-scale quantitative profiling of the Old English verse tradition |journal=[[Nature Human Behaviour]] |volume=3 |issue=6 |pages=560–567 |doi=10.1038/s41562-019-0570-1|pmid=30962615 }}</ref>

The claim to an early 11th-century date depends in part on scholars who argue that, rather than the transcription of a tale from the oral tradition by an earlier literate monk, ''Beowulf'' reflects an original interpretation of an earlier version of the story by the manuscript's two scribes. On the other hand, some scholars argue that linguistic, [[palaeography|palaeographical]] (handwriting), [[Metre (poetry)|metrical]] (poetic structure), and [[Onomastics|onomastic]] (naming) considerations align to support a date of composition in the first half of the 8th century;{{sfn|Neidorf|2014}}<ref>{{cite journal |last=Lapidge |first=Michael |author-link=Michael Lapidge |title=The Archetype of Beowulf |journal=Anglo-Saxon England |volume=29 |pages=5–41 |year=2000 |doi=10.1017/s0263675100002398|s2cid=163053320 }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |last=Cronan |first=D. |year=2004 |title=Poetic Words, Conservatism, and the Dating of Old English Poetry |journal=Anglo-Saxon England |volume=33 |pages=23–50}}</ref><!--<ref>{{cite book |last=Fulk |first=R. D. |title=A History of Old English Meter |year=1992 }}</ref>--> in particular, the poem's apparent observation of etymological vowel-length distinctions in unstressed syllables (described by [[Kaluza's law]]) has been thought to demonstrate a date of composition prior to the earlier ninth century.<ref name="link.springer.com"/><ref name="Fulk 2007 304–324"/> However, scholars disagree about whether the metrical phenomena described by Kaluza's law prove an early date of composition or are evidence of a longer prehistory of the ''Beowulf'' metre;<ref>{{cite journal |last=Weiskott |first=Eric |title=Phantom Syllables in the English Alliterative Tradition |year=2013 |journal=Modern Philology |volume=110 |issue=4 |pages=441–58 |doi=10.1086/669478 |s2cid=161824823 }}</ref> B. R. Hutcheson, for instance, does not believe Kaluza's law can be used to date the poem, while claiming that "the weight of all the evidence Fulk presents in his book{{refn|group="lower-alpha"|That is, R. D. Fulk's 1992 ''A History of Old English Meter''.}} tells strongly in favour of an eighth-century date."<ref>{{cite journal|last=Hutcheson |first=B. R. |title=Kaluza's Law, The Dating of "Beowulf," and the Old English Poetic Tradition |journal=The Journal of English and Germanic Philology  |year=2004 |volume=103 |issue=3 |pages=297–322 |jstor=27712433}}</ref>

From an analysis of creative genealogy and ethnicity, Craig R. Davis suggests a composition date in the AD 890s, when King Alfred of England had secured the submission of [[Guthrum]], leader of a division of the [[Great Summer Army|Great Heathen Army]] of the Danes, and of [[Æthelred, Lord of the Mercians|Aethelred]], ealdorman of Mercia. In this thesis, the trend of appropriating Gothic royal ancestry, established in [[Francia]] during [[Charlemagne]]'s reign, influenced the Anglian kingdoms of Britain to attribute to themselves a [[Geats|Geatish]] descent. The composition of ''Beowulf'' was the fruit of the later adaptation of this trend in Alfred's policy of asserting authority over the ''[[Angelcynn]]'', in which Scyldic descent was attributed to the West-Saxon royal pedigree. This date of composition largely agrees with Lapidge's positing of a West-Saxon exemplar {{Circa|900}}.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Davis |first=Craig R. |date=2006 |title=An ethnic dating of "Beowulf" |journal=Anglo-Saxon England |volume=35 |pages=111–129 |doi=10.1017/S0263675106000068 |jstor=44510948 |s2cid=162474995 |issn=0263-6751}}</ref>

The location of the poem's composition is intensely disputed. In 1914, [[F.W. Moorman]], the first professor of English Language at [[University of Leeds]], claimed that ''Beowulf'' was composed in Yorkshire,<ref>{{cite book |last=Moorman |first=F. W. |chapter=English Place Names and the Teutonic Sagas |editor=Oliver Elton |title=English Association Essays and Studies |volume=5 |publisher=Clarendon Press |year=1914 |pages=75ff}}</ref> but E. Talbot Donaldson claims that it was probably composed during the first half of the eighth century, and that the writer was a native of what was then called West Mercia, located in the Western Midlands of England. However, the late tenth-century manuscript, "which alone preserves the poem", originated in the kingdom of the [[Wessex|West Saxons]] — as it is more commonly known.<ref name="Tuso 1975">{{cite book |last=Tuso |first=F. Joseph |title=Beowulf: The Donaldson Translation Backgrounds and Sources Criticism |publisher=Norton & Co |place=New York |year=1975 |pages=97–98}}</ref>