Electronic "Beowulf": IBM/Macintosh

"Beowulf", the great Anglo-Saxon poem, is known only from a single eleventh-century manuscript, which was badly damaged by fire in 1731. Transcriptions made in the late eighteenth-century show that many hundreds of words and letters then visible along the charred edges subsequently crumbled away. To halt this process each leaf was mounted in a paper frame in 1845. Scholarly discussion of the date, provenance and creation of the poem continues today, and researchers regularly require access to the manuscript. Now, digitization of the whole manuscript and its publication as an electronic facsimile on CD-ROM, allows scholars to study the manuscript in detail without visiting the British Library. "Electronic Beowulf" is a database of digital images of the "Beowulf" manuscript, related manuscripts and printed texts. It includes fibre-optic readings of hidden letters and ultraviolet readings of erased text in the 11th-century manuscript, full electronic facsimiles of the 18th-century transcripts of the manuscript, and full facsimiles of important 19th-century collations prepared by J.J. Conybeare (c.1817) and Sir Frederick Madden (c.1824).
These collations are made against the first edition and Latin translation by G.J. Thorkelin (1815). A literal translation into modern English is also included (to assist readers in following the sometimes awkward syntax of the text) as well as a glossary, arranged by verse lines, geared to both the manuscript and edited text. This package contains two CD-ROM disks with user guide, and one copy of ""Beowulf" and the "Beowulf" Manuscript" by Kevin Kiernan. It runs under NetscapeTM, which is supplied with the software, and is Apple Mac or IBM 486 PC (or better) compatible.