Beowulf and the Critics by J. R. R. Tolkien (Revised Second Edition) (Volume 402) (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies)

The most important essay in the history of Beowulf scholarship, J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf, The Monsters & the Critics, has rightly been much studied and discussed. But scholars of both Beowulf and Tolkien have to this point been unaware that Tolkien's essay was a redaction of a much longer and more substantive work. Beowulf and the Critics, which Tolkien wrote in the 1930's and probably delivered as a series of Oxford lectures, presents both unpublished versions of Tolkien's lecture (A and B) each substantially different from the other and from the final, published essay. The edition includes a description of the manuscript, complete textual and explanatory notes, and a detailed critical introduction that explains the place of Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon scholarship both in the history. Beowulf and the Critics will be of interest not only to Anglo Saxonists, but also to scholars of Tolkien's works and general readers. Long, LONG out of print, this is a beautifully crafted piece of rhetoric. It is as insightful and readable a critical commentary as one is likely to find in medieval studies or literary criticism in general.