SOURCE: “The Dating of Beowulf,” in The Heroic Poetry of Dark-Age Britain: An Introduction to Its Dating, Composition, and Use as a Historical Source, University Press of America, Inc., 1997, pp. 41-63.
In the following essay, Evans examines the debate concerning the date of composition of Beowulf and argues that an oral version (probably composed between 685 and 725) of the poem preceded the earliest written version.
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