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Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary is a prose translation of the early medieval epic poem Beowulf from Old English to modern English. Translated by J. R. R. Tolkien from 1920 to 1926, it was edited by Tolkien's son Christopher and published posthumously in May 2014 by HarperCollins.
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.
Tolkien made use of his philological expertise on Beowulf to create some of the races of Middle-earth. The list of supernatural creatures in Beowulf, eotenas ond ylfe ond orcnéas, "ettens and elves and demon-corpses", contributed to his Orcs, and Elves, and to an allusion to Ettens in his "Ettenmoors" placename. [8]
"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 fantasy genre. "A Secret Vice" talks about creating imaginary languages, giving background to Tolkien's Quenya and Sindarin.
J. R. R. Tolkien contributed "On Translating Beowulf " as a preface entitled "Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of 'Beowulf'" to C. L. Wrenn's 1940 revision of John R. Clark Hall's book Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment, A Translation into Modern English Prose, which had first been published in 1901. [3]
[1] [2] Tolkien was an expert on Old English, especially Beowulf, and several of his monsters share aspects of the Beowulf monsters; his Trolls have been likened to Grendel, the Orcs' name harks back to the poem's orcneas, and the dragon Smaug has multiple attributes of the Beowulf dragon.
Beowulf ' s eotenas [ond] ylfe [ond] orcneas, "ogres [and] elves [and] devil-corpses" helped to inspire Tolkien to create orcs, Elves, and other races. [ 13 ] Tolkien was an expert on Old English literature , especially the epic poem Beowulf , and made many uses of it in The Lord of the Rings .
The history of modern Beowulf criticism is often said to begin with Tolkien, [154] author and Merton Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, who in his 1936 lecture to the British Academy criticised his contemporaries' excessive interest in its historical implications. [155]
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