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Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature.
It represents Tolkien's attempt to reconstruct the folktale underlying the narrative of the first half of Beowulf. The book ends with two versions of Tolkien's "The Lay of Beowulf". The former, subtitled "Beowulf and Grendel", is a poem or song [5] of seven eight-line stanzas about Beowulf's victory over Grendel. The latter is a poem of fifteen ...
An introduction gives first an overview of Beowulf as a poem. Heaney notes that "one publication stands out" when considering it as a work of literature: J. R. R. Tolkien's 1936 essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics". [7]
J. R. R. Tolkien, in his 1940 essay "On Translating Beowulf ", stated that it was not possible to translate each Old English word by a single word and create a readable modern English text. He gave the example of eacen , which might mean 'stalwart', 'broad', 'huge', or 'mighty' according to the context, whereas the word's connotations are of ...
The essays are: "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" looks at the critics' understanding of Beowulf, and proposes instead a fresh take on the poem. "On Translating Beowulf " looks at the difficulties in translating the poem from Old English. "On Fairy-Stories", the 1939 Andrew Lang lecture at St Andrew's University, is a defence of the ...
The first two, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary and Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg: A Translation into Modern English Prose, quickly became authoritative works that went through four editions each. [34] [35] Hall's third book, a translation of Swedish essays on Beowulf by Knut Stjerna, was similarly influential. [36]
Remounted page from Beowulf, British Library Cotton Vitellius A.XV, 133r First page of Beowulf, contained in the damaged Nowell Codex (132r). The Nowell Codex is the second of two manuscripts comprising the bound volume Cotton MS Vitellius A XV, one of the four major Old English poetic manuscripts.
Tolkien ends the essay with an analysis of lines 210–228 of Beowulf, providing the original text, marked up with stresses and his metrical patterns for each half-line, as well as a literal translation with poetical words underlined. He notes that there are three words for boat and for wave, five for men, four for sea: in each case some are ...