The heat of <i>Beowulf</i>

&lt;i&gt;The heat of Beowulf&lt;/i&gt; develops a new approach to the aesthetics of &lt;i&gt;Beowulf &lt;/i&gt;by engaging with the work of twentieth-century poets Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer whose avant-garde poetics were informed by a serious encounter with the poem in the seminar of medievalist Arthur G. Brodeur. By considering Blaser's and Spicer's poetics as they were shaped by their encounter with &lt;i&gt;Beowulf&lt;/i&gt; the book is able to open up questions about the non-representational poetics of the poem rebooting a mid-century approach to aesthetics on a new critical trajectory. The book considers the poem's aesthetics through relationship translation theory as well as early medieval discourses of sensory-affective experience and twentieth-century phenomenology. &lt;i&gt;The heat of Beowulf&lt;/i&gt; reexamines the scholarship on Old English poetics from the mid-twentieth century as it intersected with post-war avant-garde poetics and how understanding these critical histories can reshape how we read &lt;i&gt;Beowulf &lt;/i&gt;now.