Beowulf and the Dragon: Parallels and Analogues. By Christine Rauer. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000. Pp. x + 230. $75.

Despite Friedrich Panzer's statement early in the twentieth century that questions about the episode "sind nicht zu lösen ohne Berücksichtigung einer Reihe nordischer Sagen, in denen man längst auffallende Beziehungen zur Beowulfsage erkannt hat" (Studien zur Germanischen Sagengeschichte, I: Beowulf [1910], p. 313), scholarly claims concerning analogs of the poem's dragon episode (ll. 2200–3182) were until recently substantiated only by a few often-repeated allusions: pórr, Sigurdr/Siegfried, Frodo, Ragnar Lodbroekr, and Búi digr dominate lists of dragon-slayers supposed to parallel Beowulf. Panzer's contribution to the list is itself rather minimal, and subsequent decades saw little systematic attack upon the problem. Christine Rauer's Beowulf and the Dragon thus fills a gap in Beowulf scholarship that is at least a century old.

Jonathan Evans
University of Georgia