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More than 5000 entries on the history, culture and life of Britain (published in 1993 by Macmillan, now out of print)
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Beowulf
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(probably 8C) By far the most important poem in Old *English, though its plot is set entirely in northern Germany and Denmark, areas from which the *Anglo-Saxons had come. The hero, Beowulf, confronts three dragons in the course of the narrative. The first two exploits are in his youth, when he saves the court of the Danish king from the dragon Grendel and then from Grendel's mother. Rewarded with a kingdom and people of his own (the Geats), he dies late in life killing a dragon which is threatening them. The poem contains many historical references to an earlier period, the 6C, but scholars date it in or near the 8C because Beowulf's pagan world of feasting heroes has been infiltrated by Christian images and morality. It is first known in a manuscript of the 10C.
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