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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.
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.
The word orþanc occurs again in Beowulf, alongside the term searo in the phrase searonet seowed, smiþes orþancum, "a cunning-net sewn, by a smith's skill", meaning a mail-shirt or byrnie. Tolkien used searo in its Mercian form *saru for the name of Orthanc's ruler, the wizard Saruman, whose name could thus be translated "cunning man ...
Tolkien comments on the risk of using a translation as a substitute for study with grammar and dictionary, calling it an abuse, and writing that On the strength of a nodding acquaintance of this sort (it may be supposed), one famous critic informed his public that Beowulf was 'only small beer'.
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. For example, Beowulf ' s list of creatures, eotenas ond ylfe ond orcnéas, "Ettens [giants] and Elves and demon-corpses", contributed to his creation of some of the races of beings in Middle-earth. [13]
The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays is a collection of J. R. R. Tolkien's scholarly linguistic essays edited by his son Christopher and published posthumously in 1983. All of them were initially delivered as lectures to academics, with the exception of " On Translating Beowulf " , which Christopher Tolkien notes in his foreword is ...
Tolkien derived the idea of barrow-wights from Norse mythology, where heroes of several Sagas battle undead beings known as draugrs. Scholars have noted a resemblance, too, between the breaking of the barrow-wight's spell and the final battle in Beowulf , where the dragon 's barrow is entered and the treasure released from its spell.
"Sellic Spell" (pronounced [ˈselːiːtʃ ˈspeɫː]; an Old English phrase meaning "wondrous tale" and taken from the poem Beowulf) [1] is a short prose text available in Modern and Old English redactions, written by J. R. R. Tolkien in a creative attempt to reconstruct the folktale underlying the narrative in the first two thousand lines of the Old English poem Beowulf. [2]