BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BEOWULF AND FINNSBURG
I remember it was with extreme difficulty that I could bring my master to understand the meaning of the word opinion, or how a point could be disputable; because reason taught us to affirm or deny only where we are certain; and beyond our knowledge we cannot do either. So that controversies, wranglings, disputes, and positiveness in false or dubious propositions are evils unknown among the Houyhnhnms.... He would laugh that a creature pretending to reason should value itself upon the knowledge of other people's conjectures, and in things, where that knowledge, if it were certain, could be of no use....
I have often since reflected what destruction such a doctrine would make in the libraries of Europe.
Gulliver's Travels.
The following items are (except in special cases) not included in this bibliography:
(a) Articles dealing with single passages in Beowulf, or two passages only, in cases where they have already been recorded under the appropriate passage in the footnotes to the text, or in the glossary, of my revision of Wyatt's edition.
(b) Articles dealing with the emendation or interpretation of single passages, in cases where such emendations have been withdrawn by their author himself.
(c) Purely popular paraphrases or summaries.
(d) Purely personal protests (e.g., P.B.B. XXI, 436), however well founded, in which no point of scholarship is any longer involved.
Books dealing with other subjects, but illustrating Beowulf, present a difficulty. Such books may have a value for Beowulf students, even though the author may never refer to our poem, and have occasionally been included in previous bibliographies. But, unless Beowulf is closely concerned, these books are not usually mentioned below: such enumeration, if carried out consistently, would clog a bibliography already all too bulky. Thus, Siecke's Drachenkämpfe does not seem to come within the scope of this bibliography, because the author is not concerned with Beowulf's dragon.
Obviously every general discussion of Old English metre must concern itself largely with Beowulf: for such treatises the student is referred to the section Metrik of Brandl's Bibliography (Pauls Grdr.); and, for Old English heroic legend in general, to the Bibliography of my edition of Widsith.
Many scholars, e.g. Heinzel, have put into their reviews of the books of others, much original work which might well have formed the material for independent articles. Such reviews are noted as "weighty," but it must not be supposed that the reviews not so marked are negligible; unless of some value to scholarship, reviews are not usually mentioned below.
The title of any book, article or review which I have not seen and verified is denoted by the sign ‡.