Featuring essays from some of the most prominent voices in early medieval studies, Dating Beowulf playfully redeploys the word 'dating', which usually heralds some of the most divisive critical impasses in the field, to instead direct critical attention to questions of intimacy, affect and erotics. The volume argues for the relevance of the early Middle Ages to affect studies and vice-versa, offering a riposte to antifeminist discourse in Anglo-Saxon studies and opening avenues for future work by specialists in the history of emotions, literary theorists, students of Old English literature and medieval scholars alike. To this end, the essays embody a range of critical approaches from queer theory to animal studies and ecocriticism to Actor-Network Theory.