No Beowulf

I was just reading about Beowulf and it seems it survived only on one script and that script nearly was lost in a fire mid 18th century.

So without Beowulf being translated to modern english or even known of, how does English literature evolve and how do we consider the dark ages today?

I´m assuming in TTL Tolkien would end up writing something completely different, but I think Beowulf did influence more than him.
 
Even without Beowulf, there would still be fragments and shorter pieces (The Wayfarer and The Seafarer would have a much higher status), so the general appreciation of the Dark Ages wouldn't be that different. Maybe more Celtophilia, though, since a lot of old Irish literature doies survive, and probably more emphasdis on the Icelandic saga tradition.

You have a vaguely similar situation in German, where what we have is pretty much half a song and two incantations, but we know that an entire library existed.
 
Even without Beowulf, there would still be fragments and shorter pieces (The Wayfarer and The Seafarer would have a much higher status), so the general appreciation of the Dark Ages wouldn't be that different. Maybe more Celtophilia, though, since a lot of old Irish literature doies survive, and probably more emphasdis on the Icelandic saga tradition.

You have a vaguely similar situation in German, where what we have is pretty much half a song and two incantations, but we know that an entire library existed.

Yes, well, that´s true and still with that little which survived in Germany still was enough to be used in art, nationalism etc. And Germany have a lot of interest in the sagas.

I suppose Britain would swing up towards some celtophilia like the French romantics. Who knows, maybe a fantasy genre is created based more on irish myths.
 
Top