The Battle of Maldon: Together with the Homecoming of Beorhtnoth
By:
Sign Up Now!
Already a Member? Log In
You must be logged into Bookshare to access this title.
Learn about membership options,
or view our freely available titles.
- Synopsis
-
In 991 AD, vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defence-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack is widely considered one of the defining conflicts of tenth-century England, due to it being immortalised in the poem, The Battle of Maldon.
Written shortly after the battle, the poem now survives only as a 325-line fragment, but its value to today is incalculable, not just as an heroic tale but in vividly expressing the lost language of our ancestors and celebrating ideals of loyalty and friendship.
J.R.R. Tolkien considered The Battle of Maldon ‘the last surviving fragment of ancient English heroic minstrelsy’. It would inspire him to compose, during the 1930s, his own dramatic verse-dialogue, The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s Son, which imagines the aftermath of the great battle when two of Beorhtnoth’s retainers come to retrieve their duke’s body.
- Copyright:
- 2023
Book Details
- Book Quality:
- Excellent
- Book Size:
- 210 Pages
- ISBN-13:
- 9780008465827
- Publisher:
- HarperCollins Publishers Limited
- Date of Addition:
- 11/07/23
- Copyrighted By:
- © 2023 by The Tolkien Estate Limited
- Adult content:
- No
- Language:
- English
- Has Image Descriptions:
- No
- Categories:
- History, Literature and Fiction
- Submitted By:
- 170
- Proofread By:
- 170
- Usage Restrictions:
- This is a copyrighted book.