I am interested in three things, all of which center on textual wholeness; my example—'Beowulf'—is simply a case study of a larger theory about representations of TEXT. I’ll ask: i) What can we say about Beowulf in the context of London, British Library, Cotton MS Vitellius A. xv—a book beautiful, without doubt; ii) How did nineteenth- and twentieth-century editors and writers try to make of Beowulf a book beautiful? iii) And finally, what can we say about a bodiless Beowulf?— ‘Beowulf Beyond’: the poem in the digital era, beyond the confines of print.

I’ll examine editions of Beowulf in a variety of media, including facsimile, digitized, and digital instantiations of the work. This will allow us—as a collaborative—to reflect upon whether or not any edition can ever be considered more than an illusion: that which is, in essence, an incorrect experience.