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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.
Beginning shortly before he became a barrister, and continuing until shortly before his death, Hall wrote seven books alongside several shorter works. [33] 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.
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]
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 ...
J. R. R. Tolkien's essay "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics", initially delivered as the Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture at the British Academy in 1936, and first published as a paper in the Proceedings of the British Academy that same year, is regarded as a formative work in modern Beowulf studies.
Crowne drew on examples of the theme's appearance in twelve Old English texts, including one occurrence in Beowulf. [28] It was also observed in other works of Germanic origin, Middle English poetry, and even an Icelandic prose saga.
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 ...
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 ...