Beowulf Teaching Resources
The new Beowulf movie may not have been the cinematic classic you’d been hoping for, but it may get your students interested in the original Old English poem, so here are some teaching resources available on the web:
Lit2Go has the entire poem available as an mp3 download, and the site also includes the full text of the poem in pdf format.- Librivox also has a free unabridged recording of the entire poem.
- Be sure to check out Rocketbook’s video study guide for Beowulf.
- Fellow blogger Dana Huff has written a Beowulf Study Guide (pdf) for Penguin Classics.
- The University of Nevada, Reno has a nice page of Resources for the Study of Beowulf.
- If you’d like to show your students how Beowulf might have been originally performed, check out Benjamin Bagby’s performance of the poem in its original language.
- You might also find the Sparknotes for Beowulf helpful.
Also, be sure to check out Beowulf: A New Verse Translation translated by Nobel-prize winner Seamus Heaney .
Aberdeen University has a website entitled *Beowulf for Beginners* which you might consider adding to your list of resources. It’s an interactive educational resource for schoolchildren – but often enjoyed by those somewhat older (which is why the University relaunched the site when we discovered our students who had come across it as kids were still using it). You can check it out at http://www.abdn.ac.uk/english/beowulf/
Best regards – David Duff,