I have been listening to Michael C Drout’s lecture series on the Anglo-Saxons and he loves Beowulf, just loves it. But his only point of view is from the Anglo Saxon and modern perspective of the text. He later references the Elizabethans/Henry VIIers raiding the monasteries to learn about the Anglo-Saxon past as confirmation to their own religious views. But was Beowulf rediscovered during this time? Was it rediscovered even later? Did monks and lay people during the Middle Ages know about Beowulf?

I read the Wikipedia article on the poem and it just mentions Tolkien was the first to do modern scholarship on Beowulf in “On Translating Beowulf”.

I know the Homeric and Virgil’s works were know by poets and authors of the “High Middle Ages” as was general roman mythology but somehow I don’t think the English, a conquered people had much impact besides Arthurian literature