Gathering some of the most important studies from the past 25 years of "Beowulf" scholarship, "The Beowulf Reader" offers essential insights both to scholars in the field and to readers coming to this Old English literary masterpiece for the first time. The carefully selected essays in this volume represent the various approaches that have dominated recent Beowulf studies and illustrate the evolution of Old English literary criticism, from New Critical formalism to recent trends in critical theory and a resurgent historicism.