SOURCE: Huppé, Bernard F. “Judith.” In The Web of Words: Structural Analyses of the Old English Poems Vainglory, The Wonder of Creation, The Dream of the Rood, and Judith, pp. 114-90. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1970.

In the following excerpt, Huppe reviews the historical and biblical background of Judith.

The beginning of the Judith is lost, but how much is lost is a matter of debate. On the one hand the amount of loss is assumed by A. S. Cook to be negligible, the poem being “virtually complete as it now is.” On the other hand, B. J. Timmer considers that the surviving lines constitute merely the last fourth of a poem of “about 1344” lines, and the editor of the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records, E. V. K. Dobbie, is of a similar opinion.¹ To judge the poem the reader must decide between these two views; for a...