When he has finished, you leave with the overwhelming impression that you know the anonymous poet who created Beowulf more than a dozen centuries ago, that you have felt the man's personality touch you . . . Mr. Bagby comes as close to holding hundreds of people in a spell as ever a man has.
Admission is free and the performance is open to the public.
Bagby's appearance is sponsored by IWU's Student Senate, President's Office, English Department, Sigma Tau Delta, Mellon Center, Humanities Department, and Co-Curricular Programs. Beowulf's roots rest in the art of the scop, the bardic storyteller and reciter at formal and informal gatherings popular in the tribal society of early medieval England. The scop would retell the Beowulf tale in song and speech oftentimes accompanying himself on the lyre. Bagby performs Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon dialect. Critical Acclaim Bagby's Beowulf performance has won critical acclaim in the United States and overseas.