You will do a close reading (in-depth critical analysis) of a brief section (i.e. anything from a line or stanza from a poem or other genre of text up to a full page of text) on Beowoulf Do not feel you need to reproduce the selected text in its entirety (remember your audience has a copy of the text), but you will need to highlight particular words or lines to illustrate your points, citing these correctly using in-text citations.
While you will concentrate on a single section of your chosen text, you should refer to the text as a whole (i.e. how might this section of the text set up what is to come in the rest of the text, or how might it differ so much from the rest of the text that the author clearly intended a shift of tone or form for some specific reason and to cause a particular effect). Note too what is at stake in the author’s decision to craft your chosen portion of the text in this particular way (i.e. Why is this important? What are the implications of this? How might these choices transform readers’ understanding of themselves, the social/economic/political nature of their society, etc.).