"Sellic Spell" (pronounced [ˈselːiːtʃ ˈspeɫː]; an Old English phrase meaning "wondrous tale" and taken from the poem Beowulf)[1] is a short prose text available in Modern and Old English redactions, written by J. R. R. Tolkien in a creative attempt to reconstruct the folktale underlying the narrative in the first two thousand lines of the Old English poem Beowulf.[2] Among other things, it seeks to clarify and integrate a number of narrative strands in the early medieval poem.[3]
- ^ Tolkien, J.R.R. (2014). Christopher Tolkien (ed.). Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary Together with Sellic Spell. London: HarperCollinsPublishers. p. 358. ISBN 978-0-00-759006-3.
- ^ Tolkien 2014.
- ^ Tolkien 2014, p. 355.