Beowulf is a very old English poem — not old like a Victorian novel, but from a time when English itself still sounded like another language. It is an epic: a long poem about gods, great deeds, and a hero. The hero is a man called Beowulf. He kills terrifying creatures (a monster named Grendel, then Grendel’s mother, then a dragon) and later becomes a king. People often date the poem to the 8th century, though actually scholars do not all agree on the year — some put it later — but it is more than a thousand years old. Nobody knows who wrote it. The one old book we have was copied long after the story was first told. Students meet Beowulf as the famous starting point of English literature, even though you cannot read the original without special study. Write it with a capital B; it is a name.