Reviews for From the sword to the pen

The average rating for From the sword to the pen based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-04-15 00:00:00 Jed Beery This book was either recommended or inspired by Elizabeth, a woman I met at the old Volume II Cafe in Rogers Park, Chicago over her copy of "The Dream of the Rood." Having read Beowulf only many years previous and being oppressed by a sense of ignorance, I picked this up as a refresher so I could pretend some intelligence about matters Anglo-Saxon.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-09-24 00:00:00 Tim Sweeney For years I (mistakenly) taught my students that Beowulf was composed around the year 700 and written down about 300 years later. Kevin Kiernan, by his meticulous study of the actual Beowulf manuscript, has argued convincingly that the poem was in fact composed and written down at the same time, in about the year 1000; in fact, he believes the second Beowulf copyist (of two) was the anonymous poet himself. Much of this book is highly technical regarding his analysis of the manuscript -- but it's fascinating stuff and very readable nevertheless.