Beowulf

By Simon & Schuster

The story of one man's triumph over a legendary monster, Beowulf marks the beginning of Anglo-Saxon literature as we know it today.

Beowulf is the earliest extant poem in a modern European language. It was composed in England four centuries before the Norman Conquest. But no one knows exactly when it was composed, or by whom, or why. As a social document this great epic reflects a feudal, newly Christian world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory and death.

When a Danish king called Hrothgar is confronted with Grendel, a monster who has taken to attacking his hall Herot, Beowulf of the Geats comes to slay Grendel. Then Beowulf must slay Grendel's mother and battle a mighty dragon.

This edition includes:
-A concise introduction that gives readers important background information
-A timeline of significant events that provides the book's historical context
-An outline of key themes and plot points to help readers form their own interpretations
-Detailed explanatory notes
-Critical analysis and modern perspectives on the work
-Discussion questions to promote lively classroom and book group interaction
-A list of recommended related books and films to broaden the reader's experience

Enriched Classics offer readers affordable editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and insightful commentary. The scholarship provided in Enriched Classics enables readers to appreciate, understand, and enjoy the world's finest books to their full potential.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Jan 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781439117231

Book preview

Cover: Beowulf, by Anonymous

Beowulf

Supplementary material written by Frederic Will

Series edited by Cynthia Brantley Johnson

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INTRODUCTION

Beowulf:

HARSH STRUGGLE AND QUIET GRACE

Beowulf is one of the world’s great works of imaginative literature, set in early Christian England in the years before the end of the first millennium—a world of harsh cold, darkness, heroic warfare, minstrelsy, death, and struggle. Beowulf remains a timeless classic a thousand years after its birth because it both brings that old English history to life in our own era and resonates with the timeless quality of all great stories. At its opening, the epic transports us into a land of mystery where a lamented king has died. At the end of the poem the story comes full circle: we see that Beowulf, who was a young hero in the first half of the poem, as an aged hero, as deeply human as was the king whose death opens the epic. Between the beginning and the end, of course, are some truly incredible adventures filled with gore, guts, horror, and heroism.

Beowulf’s beautifully poetic, tragic treatment of the themes of aging and wisdom secures its place among the world’s masterpieces. But, of course, this is not merely a poem about aging but a prototypical hero story, filled with dramatic events and bloody struggles. The poem sustains its air of beautiful mystery, and its painful awareness of the struggling transience of human life, at a gripping level throughout the epic, whether we are pondering the solemnity of funeral rites or hunched in suspense in the middle of one of Beowulf’s many exciting battles. This is true not only of the story itself, which moves from youth to age as our characters face an endless series of threats; it is also true at the level of the language—of the poetry itself. For Beowulf is filled with poetic language of great sophistication and beauty, so beautiful that it is audible even in its contemporary English translations. Reading these—and, perhaps, attempting the poem in its original language—we can see metrical, metaphoric, and stylistic subtleties that can only have flourished in a high civilization.

The civilization that produced Beowulf has deeply influenced our own. The heroic world of early Norse England, with its great halls, its dauntless seafarers, and its heroic codes of behavior, may seem very far removed from our own world. But this Anglo-Saxon culture formed the basis for the Northern European, Germanic, and, of course, English cultures that still live on in America today. The values codified in the Anglo-Saxon communities of the first millennium—honor, persistence, hard work, valor—have come to us through hundreds of years and countless generations and still inform our laws and lives today.

The Origins of Beowulf

No one knows who wrote Beowulf. The original manuscript may first have been written out shortly after the year 1000, and that date may have been a good three hundred years after the creation of the poem itself. Scholars have proposed dates ranging from 675 to the early twelfth century for the creation of the poem, based on criteria including the original inception of the poetic material, the first recitation of the material, or the point at which diverse strands of an oral tradition were stitched together. Adding to the uncertainty of this dating process is the fact that we do not know whether the poem Beowulf was a completely oral composition or was part written. If the author of the poem was a monk or other educated writer attached to an Anglo-Saxon monastery, which is one mainstream theory, we can push the date of composition of the poem much later than the year 700. If the author was a bard, a scop to the Norse, the creation of something like our present Beowulf may have occurred in the late seventh or early eighth century.

Historical and Literary Context of Beowulf

Manuscript and Publication

Beowulf survived the vicissitudes of history in a single manuscript belonging to the private collection of Sir Robert Cotton (1571–1631). After Cotton’s collection was damaged by fire in 1731, Beowulf was moved to the British Museum, where it resides today. To look at this manuscript is to shiver with the realization that our cultural history is fragile: the margins of the text are visibly charred by the flames that so nearly deprived us entirely of this precious vestige of early English culture.

The first publicly available edition of Beowulf was published in1815. Its first translation into modern English dates from 1837. Unlike The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (c.1342–1400), Beowulf is a relatively recent part of the canon of English literature. Some scholars have linked the rising literary status of Beowulf to a British yearning for ancient national roots as its ever expanding empire brought it into contact with the powerful, and extremely old, civilizations of the East.

Language and Form

The first dimension of Beowulf’s literary history is its language. Beowulf was composed in Late West Saxon, the standard vernacular used for writing down Anglo-Saxon poetry. This is an early Germanic form of English, before it had blended with Latin and French in the course of the Norman invasions of the eleventh century. Beowulf is written in alliterative verse, in which each line is divided into two metrical halves, with two stressed syllables in each half. At least one, and usually both, of the stressed syllables in the first half line alliterate (have the same beginning sound) with the first stressed word of the second half line. Recited to the harp in a fashion often described in the poem of Beowulf, this poetry must have been powerful and mesmerizing. Throw in a roaring fire, fifty thanes chomping on boar meat, and the dark outside, and you have the ingredients for vigorous and decidedly premodern entertainment.

Placing Beowulf in History

Beowulf was composed by an Anglo-Saxon (or West Saxon) looking back to Scandinavian and North German lands from a distant pagan past. Therefore, we know that this epic is to some extent a reconstruction of the past. Though we do not know the precise date either of Beowulf the poem or of the historical events from which it is drawn, scholars have made a few broad guesses. Beowulf itself seems to have been composed in the late seventh or early eighth century, while historical and archaeological evidence suggests that the period portrayed in the poem may be as early as the sixth century AD. One of the most sensational examples of such evidence comes from Anglo-Saxon archaeology. The Sutton Hoo burial ship, discovered in Suffolk, England, in l938–39, lays out for us the vestiges of a hero’s burial: a brilliant spread of gold and silver artifacts, of military and nautical equipment, corresponding to much of the heroic paraphernalia assembled for funeral rites in the poem Beowulf. The date of the Sutton Hoo burial is AD 620–630, which may put it a century and a half or two before the composition of the poem of Beowulf.

The Rise of Europe and England

Beowulf is a product of the great historical developmental process that followed the breakdown of the Roman Empire in the West of Europe and led eventually to the establishment of the European nation states we know today. It lies at the beginning of this long historical transition, and is among the many literary documents that herald the development of what would become modern England.

By the early years of the fifth century AD, the Roman government of Britain had begun to collapse—as had the Roman hold on its entire empire. From archaeological and later chronicle evidence—such as that of Bede in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, completed about 732, or the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from the late ninth century—we know that during the fall of the Roman Empire, the British Isles were being colonized by Northern European tribes such as the Frisians, Danes, and Saxons. Slowly, and in the course of endless wars, these tribes mixed with the native Britons and Celts. A decisive event in this new colonization of the British Isles took place at the end of the sixth century, when Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine from Rome to Kent, where he established Christ Church, a beacon for the now rapidly expanding Christian population of England. From that date begins the modernizing process of the British Isles, in which the many disparate cultures and religions that had flourished under Roman rule were gradually brought under the reign of the Church.

It was not long before the extraordinarily rich Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition began to flourish. This Old English poetry preserves for us a library of fine texts, including Widsith, The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and The Battle of Maldon, all of which emerge out of more or less the same temporal and literary crucible as Beowulf. In their pages we can sense the enormity and difficulty of historical, cultural, linguistic, and spiritual change under way as both the Christian and pagan worlds blend in a swirl of nostalgia, historical loneliness, and faith.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF

Beowulf

410: Roman troops leave the Roman province of Britain.

450–600: After departure of Roman forces from Britain, a prolonged incursion of Germanic tribes (Angles, Saxons, Frisians) into Britain, where they struggled with the local inhabitants, the Welsh and British.

521: Raid by Hygelac (uncle of Beowulf in Beowulf) on the continent; record of this in work of Gregory of Tours.

597: Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, takes over as archbishop of Canterbury and starts to convert the locals to Christianity.

650–660: Sutton Hoo ship burial site in East Anglia.

670–735: Lifetime of The Venerable Bede, Northum-brian writer of the Ecclesiastical History of the English People.

700: Approximated date of the composition of Beowulf.

Reviews for Beowulf

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The poemBeowulf is a tough sell. Not only has it traditionally been used by English departments around the world to break the spirit of newly-recruited undergraduates (who thought they had signed up for three years of Emily Dickinson and Virginia Woolf, only to find themselves out on the parade-ground practicing their Old English sound-shifts for month after month...), but also, when you get down to it, it turns out to be a poem about a macho muscle-man who spends his time - when not quaffing mead - either ripping monsters limb from limb or swimming long distances in full armour. Told completely straight, without any discernible trace of irony. Well, not exactly my cup of tea...Skimming through the introduction of the Bolton & Wrenn critical text, it turns out that we know surprisingly little about what must be one of the most-studied poems in the canon. It has survived in only one manuscript, the famous "British Museum Cotton Vitellius A XV" (bizarrely, the emperor Vitellius comes into it because it's his bust that stands on top of that particular bookcase). In fact, there are very few Old English texts that survive as multiple copies, so this uniqueness isn't unusual in itself. The manuscript seems to have been written around the year 1000, and textual evidence suggests that it's at least the third generation of copies since the poem was first written down. When and where that was is hotly disputed, but Mercia in the second half of the 8th century is a strong possibility. The action of the poem is set in a pre-Christian past in Denmark and Southern Sweden (with some mention of actual historical figures from the time), whilst the poet is obviously from a Christian background and refers quite freely to the Old Testament. What I found most surprising was to discover that the poem was not conspicuously a "classic" in its own time: we don't have any other contemporary references to it (apart from the "Finnesburg fragment", a single page of MS that seems to come from a different version of part of the same story), and as far as anyone can tell it fell completely off the radar of English literature between the end of the Old English period and the time around 650 years later when the first modern scholars became interested in Old English manuscripts and discovered this poem, bound in with a prose translation of St Augustine. So Beowulf is only part of the history of English literature with hindsight.The Heaney translationSeamus Heaney, of course, saw it as rather more than a philological crossword puzzle or a Boys' Own adventure story, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered with it. He points us in particular at the last part of the poem, where the elderly (70+) hero decides that he owes it to his people to take on one last dragon, even though it will certainly cost him his life. And indeed, the anonymous poet deals with the complex emotions involved here a little less brusquely than he does elsewhere - but this isn't Shakespearean drama, and we shouldn't expect it to be.What Heaney is really interested in, I think, is the poetical challenge of finding something in modern English that has the same magically seductive sound quality as Old English alliterative verse (which always sounds magnificent, even if you haven't a clue what it means...). And, of course, being Seamus Heaney, he decides to imagine the voices of the poem as if they came from the Northern Ireland farmers of his own sound-world, puts these into a slightly looser form of the Old English two-stress half-lines, and succeeds brilliantly. This translation is a poem that you just have to read aloud, even if there's no way that you can find any sympathy for Beowulf as a character.

[terpsichoreus · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There are different ways to translate, and it comes down to what you want to get across. Most creative authors have such a strong voice and sense of story that they will overwhelm the original author. As Bentley wrote of Pope's Iliad: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer".Sometimes this sort of indirect translation is useful in itself, such as during the transition of the Renaissance from Italy to Britain. Many of the British poets rewrote Italian ...more There are different ways to translate, and it comes down to what you want to get across. Most creative authors have such a strong voice and sense of story that they will overwhelm the original author. As Bentley wrote of Pope's Iliad: "It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer".Sometimes this sort of indirect translation is useful in itself, such as during the transition of the Renaissance from Italy to Britain. Many of the British poets rewrote Italian sonnets into English, and though the line of descent was unquestionable, the progeny was it's own work. Another example might be the digestion of Wuxia and Anime into films such as Tarantino's or The Matrix (though Tarantino's sense of propriety is often suspect).However, in these cases, we can hardly call the new work a translation of the old. You are not experiencing the old work but the inspiration it has wrought. Beowulf is just this sort of translation, capturing the excitement and passion of the story, but obliterating the details which make the work interesting to students of history or literary theory.Heaney's translation is a fun, rollicking epic, able to draw in even uninitiated students, which is no doubt why it is now included in Norton. Unfortunately, it is not a particularly useful tool for teaching the importance of the original work. Heaney severs many connections to the unique world of Beowulf.As the only surviving epic from its time, place, and tradition, Beowulf is a unique vision into a pre-Christian culture outside of the Mediterranean. Though the poem shows Christian revisions, these stand out in stark contrast to the rest of the work, and can usually be easily excised, unlike many pervasive Christian impositions on the 'pagan' cultures.Heaney is not a philologist nor a historian, but a popular poet. He doesn't have the background for conscientious translation, and the clearest sign that his translation is haphazard is the fact that there are no footnotes explaining the difficult decisions that most translators have to make in every line. Heaney also loses much of the alliteration and appositives that marked the artistry of the original.A Beowulf that can exist without context is a Beowulf that has well and truly been separated from its past. Perhaps his translation is suitable for an introduction to the work, but a good professor should be able to teach the original without much difficulty.Then again, perhaps the inclusion of this version in college classes has to do with the fact that college is no longer the path for scholars, but has been given the same equality treatment as art and poetry. College is now meant for your average, half-literate frat boy who only wants a BA so he can be a mid-level retail manager.Heaney's translation certainly suits for them, since it is the easiest version of the story this side of a digital Angelina. It's fun and exciting, certainly worth a read, but doesn't stand up as a translation.

[eoin-311239 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So, Heaney wins the Nobel, leaves Harvard, and decides to do this. Best seller, agreed new standard, best translation. Why? He’s not an Old English scholar, not a philologist as such. He was already rich and famous.

I have two guesses:
1. He had already written so much of his own work, he was looking into new sources, translation being a good one. Fine, probably true.
2. Revenge. England conquered Ireland, crushing out the native culture and language as best they could for hundreds of years. Early 20th century, Ireland attempts to reclaim language and culture, including political independence. Except where Heaney is from in the North. So, how do you conquer the conqueror hundreds of years later? You take their language and use it against them. Like Joyce, but instead of moving further ahead, he goes back to the beginning. Translates the oldest English there is into 20th century Irish dialect English.

[sloopjonb · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I had this book on my shelves for 20 years before reading it. I really shouldn't have left it that long. Heaney's translation brings the old poem to life, blowing off the cobwebs of nearly two hundred years of it being studied rather than read. His translation was contentious, especially with Angl0-Saxon purists, but I have no complaints to make; he manages to make the old words meaningful, and evokes marvellously the atmosphere of a society that was long gone even when the poem was written.Of course one cannot discuss Beowulf without mentioning Tolkien; as Heaney acknowledges, he was the first to treat the poem as literature rather than merely an ancient artefact. Every Tolkien fan should read this; they will understand him much better, and they will find therein the originals of many scenes and phrases in his works.

[tldegray-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful translation.

[maowangvater · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The mighty young hero of the Geats rescues the Danes from two hellish monsters that are slaughtering their warriors as they sleep in the royal banquet hall. Then heaped in glory and treasure he returns home to become, in his old age, king and dragon-slayer: the final glorious deed that ends his life. Raffel's translation into vivid alliterative modern English is vivid and exciting. The new afterword lauds how well this translation has stood the test of time, and how many recent adaptations of the poem have been published since then (including the icky 2007 movie). Frank also writes that this earliest epic did not enter the canon of English literature until the late nineteenth century.

[kurt.rocourt · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Good story.

[cecrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm a bit shamed to rate this below average, perceiving its value as a historical artifact, but as literature in terms of content it doesn't amount to much more than a curiosity piece. Such perfectly crafted heroes are now denigrated so the model doesn't serve, and the story reads like the tale of a hubris bubble that never gets popped. That said, I'm glad to have taken the few minutes required to breeze through a modern translation for discussion purposes. I suspect a less wooden ear than mine for poetry, and wearing more patience, may perceive greater magic in its original form.

[josephtate_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Excellent, excellent translation.

[liz1564 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Beowulf translated by Stephen Mitchell was sent to me by Yale University Press via NetGalley. Thank you.This Beowulf by Stephen Mitchell is an very entertaining translation, The adjective that comes to my mind is "robust." The narrative is straightforward and the flashbacks and foreshadowing are not awkward and do not stop the forward movement of the story. I taught Beowulf for many years to high school students and I wish I had this version. The literature anthology I used had the Kennedy translation which I personally love for it lyric imagery. In Kennedy, the lines about Grendel approaching Heorot (lines 678-680) are "From the stretching moors, from the misty hollows, Grendel came creeping, accursed of God." The Mitchell translation renders the same lines as " Then up from the moor, in a veil of mist, Grendel came slouching. He bore God's wrath." I like the former, but I know my students would have preferred the latter.In the end, whether it be Mitchell, Seamus Heaney, Charles Kennedy or E. Donaldson, all translations of Beowulf are a good thing. I am sure the scops who entertained their listeners during the black nights in the cold north would each have put his own spin on the story. Make it beautiful or make it bloody. One thing is for sure. Beowulf can never be boring.Some very nice addition sto the Mitchell translation are the addition of maps, genealogical charts and a list of characters and place names with pronunciations.

[antao-3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

(Original Review, 2001-02-20)If you are familiar with the Hindu myth-kitty though, you may also find parallels between “Beowulf” and the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. When Jambavan spends a lot of time telling Hanuman about how great he is, to induce him to jump to Lanka in search of Sita, or Arjun surveys the array of warriors against him, described in some detail, leading to the Bhagavad Gita, or the Pandavas' "advisor" at Draupadi's swayamvar asks the unknown Karna to declare his lineage and rank.In Beowulf, where the eponymous protagonist has to be introduced by his history in order to be considered worthy of being received in Hrothgar's halls, and able to, perhaps, take his chances against Grendel. Thorsten Verblen's, in his model of conspicuous consumption, suggested that in societies, or social conditions, that were not stable a man could only gain status by his reputation and by what he carried with him: his arms, his abilities and his history. It is a theory that applies to the bling culture of hip-hop, where alas, lives can be dramatically shortened, as much as to the Bronze Age and Iron Age world's of chiefdoms and agriculturists versus nomads. Women were acquired by raids, but there was enough spare, or surplus, labour available for ancillary crafts to develop: goldsmithery, ironmongery and the like. In such conditions, a man meeting a stranger or a putative enemy, would be likely to show off his armour and then show off further by talking about who he was, both his history and his lineage. Like Buffaloes sizing each other up before fighting, it may have been a way of reducing the number of fights that had to occur.Let us not forget the fate of Patroclus, who deliberately rode around in Achilles' bling and therefore got caught in a drive-by assassination. Had he been in a Prius instead of his black, silver-wheeled, borrowed SUV, he might have lived...It reminds me of the peaceful moment of the Bhagavad Gita from the Mahabharata just before the great battle of Kurukshetra, though of course Arjuna and Krishna are on the same side.Celtic kingdoms, Saxon kingdoms, Anglo-Norman kingdoms, were ALL European kingdoms. There was no hard border between mainland Britain and the rest of Europe. Kings ruled territories on both sides of the channel in joint jurisdictions. Laws and customs, language, arts and religion were common, in overlapping webs. The Celtic (that is British, or Welsh) and the Saes/Saxon peoples were not 'barbaric'. They were civilised, literate cultures, with highly organised governments, law codes, religion and arts.The group which was 'barbaric' was the 'Normans'. These were a rabble of raiders, adventurers, thieves and pirates, drawn together to loot other peoples. They were illiterate, depending on the monks of those they conquered to keep their records. Their law codes were truly barbaric, vastly inferior to the British and the Saxons, who operated on a system of compensation payments (fines). It was the Normans who imposed amputation, tortures, and increased executions. They were supreme in violence only, inheriting the worst of Viking culture without its balancing qualities, as the Normans were the misfits and rejects. What they were also good at was propaganda. Their bards sang wholly fabricated histories claiming an honourable ancestry for a united people that didn't exist. There were no 'Normans' until the bards constructed the myth of them as the raiders conquests grew successful.This is the 'people' who spawned the British ruling class. The British ruling class keeps books that trace their genealogy proudly 'back to the Conquest'. They were violent thugs, the vermin of Europe, who grabbed and stole, then dressed it all up in myths of propaganda. They haven't changed. Just like the rest of Europe, namely in Portugal...I wonder what the Britons thought about the invading Anglo-Saxons. Were they any better? The difference is, we have very few records to tell us what they thought. The invaders came in sufficient numbers that over a period of centuries their language replaced the native language, and so over time the Brits ended up with a weird sense that the Anglo-Saxon invaders were "Britons", but later Norman invaders were "them", because there weren't enough of them to replace the language of the Anglo-Saxon invaders (although enough to give us 1/3 of the English vocabulary).What did the Britons think about the Saxons (who didn't invade, but simply switch roles from mercenaries to usurpers...)? Actually we know exactly what the British thought of the Saes - they loathed them. See “Armes Prydain” and other works of the time. There was no worse insult than to be called a Saes - Saxon. The native British were culturally superior if only because settlers come as younger sons, or people who are unsuccessful at home, less educated, less cultured. You don't invade and crush natives by singing pretty songs. Compare “Beowulf” with the “Mabinogi” and the gulf is huge - like comparing drinking songs with Shakespeare.It's also inaccurate that the Saes replaced the British. Genetics say otherwise and the story is mixed. In some places it was violent takeover. In others it was trade, marriage, settlement. Coexistence is now the new historical understanding. Brits were mainly herders so held to the high ground and you can still see their place names across 'England' today in higher areas. The Saes were grain farmers who lived on lowland clays so their names survive there. The Saes were not as educated as the Brits. Alfred imported monks from the Cymru (Wales) led by Asser, to teach his people to read and write. Alfred was a visionary, like the later Guillaum le Batard of Normandy. But their peoples were less savoury, especially the Normans who practised genocide to terrify the natives. The whole of Yorkshire was depopulated, half of Pembrokeshire, and a large area of the Scots border. Massacres, or else driven out into destitution. On the second the British ruling class has not changed, still driving people into poverty and homelessness, just like the rest of Europe, namely in Portugal...The English called themselves English from at least the sixth or seventh century on. It was the Normans and their successors who coined the term Anglo Saxon to describe them. All part of the attempt to legitimise their conquest and pretend that they were the rightful rulers of the kingdom and its confiscated estates; and that English history started with them. That's why they promoted the Arthurian myth and tried to pretend they were its heirs - in order to try to write the English out of the story. And why they immediately knocked down the English Abbeys and cathedrals and rebuilt them in their own style.

[malarchy_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Penguin Epics edition of Beowulf is a 117 page translation in verse form by Michael Alexander. It is the same translation as the Penguin Classics edition but does not contain the additional contextual information.Beowulf is of course the legendary Old English epic written probably over a thousand years ago. It is a Scandic tale rather than an English one, the action taking place in the lands of various Scandic and Germanic factions. What makes it special is its existence as such a great early Old English work. What makes it epic is that Beowulf tells a series of outstanding adventures captured in the literary style of the Germanic peoples who populated northern Europe including Eastern Britain.There are various translations of Beowulf. This translation makes a very interesting judgement call. It retains a lot of the Germanic sentence structure rather than aiming for a more readable style to modern English users. This makes for a tough read at times in English but a more natural fit in terms of sub-clause use and verb positioning for those familiar with German and its most closely related languages. After a while the more complex composition becomes increasingly readable to the point where a reader can find ease in the word order patterns.There are occasional points to criticise in the translation. In particular the translation of the word Wyrd. It is hard to skip over the translation of Wyrd as Weird because it makes no sense in modern English. Fate would have been a better translation. It is particularly difficult to skip over when used around the adventure with the dragon give the proximity of Old English Wyrm and Wyrd. Why one has the modern English translation and not the other is hard to follow.Still, the translation by Michael Alexander is rich and evocative. It is hard to describe the times and places of Beowulf but the Epics edition does a decent enough job.The story itself is of course outstanding. It is the 15th book in the Penguin Epics collection and comes much later than some of the earlier works in the series. The later nature makes it a much more advanced work than those which have come before except perhaps Cupid & Psyche. What makes it so distinct is the crossover of symbolism, heroic deed, and societal structure. The bonds between people are much more organic than in more ancient literature.It helps that Beowulf is not just fiction but the elements that may be fictitious are still gripping. The battles against Grendel is surprisingly short, Beowulf defeating Grendel in their first combat. Grendel's mother offers another foe for Beowulf but he is able to defeat both of them. He does so in different circumstances. The battle with Grendel taking place in the familiar surroundings of a great hall. The battle with Grendel's mother however is more fantastic. This battle is much more of an adventure into legend with the fight itself taking place underwater, where Beowulf would in reality have stood no chance.That there is a distinction between a more real environment for the battle with Grendel and a fabulous one in combat with Grendel's mother could suggest slightly different traditions. Was Grendel real?The possibility of reality exists because of the non-fiction elements of the work. The battles against Frisians and the Battle on the Ice being parts of the sequence of wars in northern Europe.That Beowulf himself is a Geat is fascinating. It is thrilling to have a work of this quality preserve a tale from a defeated people. As a people now culturally assimilated into Swedes, it is really exciting to hear their voice from an elder time.Beowulf's ultimate demise comes in battle with a dragon. His men are not brave enough to take on the great wyrm but Beowulf and the dragon are each other's match. It is a terrific fight and a great way for a hero to go.Beowulf's Christian nature is a little odd. He initially is presented as a Christian hero which does not fit with the Christianisation of the region. There is only limited reference to Christianity as the work progresses. It seems as though the religious element was a later addition. It certainly is not enough of an addition to erode the references to traditional Scandic society and culture.The influence of this great work on more modern literature is entirely obvious. Tolkien lifted not just ideas and themes from Beowulf even character names. The most famous author in the fantasy genre turns out to have written tales that could almost be sequels to this old epic.The Penguin Epics edition does not contain any additional information other than the work itself. It fits within the Penguin Epics Collection. The Penguin Classics version apparently contains a bit more. This absence does no real harm to the work at all for those familiar with north European mythology or history, or indeed for those able to do a bit of follow-up research themselves.Beowulf is a must read for everyone. Which edition to choose is a matter of choice. This offering was a good choice for this reader.

[sweetbriarpoet · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful poem. I have been meaning to read this for years- and thought it would require a deeper understanding of Old English to really capture the essence of the poem. If you are worried about this, I suggest reading Seamus Heaney's translation. He is such an amazing poet (my absolute favorite) and his knowledge of Old English means you get a meaningful translation which really allows you to just enjoy the story.

[bryndahlquis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was very surprised at the ease with which I read this great epic poem. I expected it to be very hard to get through and keep focused on, but it's actually a very straightforward story. Lots of action, and lots and lots of random little stories thrown in.This is the only version of Beowulf I've read, but from the snippets I've seen of other versions, this would probably be my favorite.

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This was a surprisingly speedy, easy and enjoyable read--for which Heaney, the translator, deserves a lot of credit. Especially given this is a verse translation. I've found that I have preferred prose translations of Homer and Dante because those trying to be true to alliteration, meter and rhyme often feel forced, awkward and occlude the meaning. It probably helped that Heaney is a distinguished poet in his own right; his translation was fluid, with a rhythm and tone somewhere between Homer and Tolkien in feel. And the story is fun, a Pagan tale set mostly in Dark Ages Denmark with Christian interjections by the original poet who probably was a monk writing anywhere between the mid-seventh to the end of the tenth century. There are monsters, notably Grendel and a dragon with his horde. What's not to love?And a translation is needed. I read a bilingual edition, with the original Old English (Anglo-Saxon) and modern English translation side by side. Knowing Spanish I often can make out the gist of passages in Portuguese, Italian or even French. And though it's not easy, I can get Chaucer, in Middle English, even if I prefer a translation there too. I was surprised really at how indecipherable I found the Anglo-Saxon of Beowulf. All the more reason to appreciate Heaney's achievement.

[bezoar44 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This translation (by Seamus Heaney) of Beowulf has a plain-spoken elegance. The layout - original Anglo-Saxon on the left page, Heaney translation on the right -- makes it possible to read the original poem aloud for its gorgeous alliteration and rolling rhythm. Still, the world of the poem is dismal. Life is hard; death is fated. Men kill one another, or monsters kill them. Everyone is so poor (by modern standards) that an individual shirt of ring-mail is a family heirloom, handed down for generations, or given by a king to a follower as a major mark of favor. In such a world, listening to good poetry might be one of the few lasting pleasures. The story of Beowulf is tedious; the poetry, transcendent.

[thedivineoomba · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

So, I found this version of Beowulf in the clearance bin of a used book store. I picked it up thinking this is a book I should read - and, it surpassed all expectation.I read the initial part of Beowulf in highschool - wear he fights Grendel and his mother. At the time, I wasn't interested. It was hard going, and it didn't really stick with me. But this new translation maintained the verse form while keeping mostly true to the original translation (this is my non-expert opinion. I don't read old English, so can't really say). It totally opened my eyes into the world of England in the year 1000 or so, with knights and armour, and chivalry and all that. Its fun, its exciting, and totally a different age and values than what I am used to.Highly recommended.

[pferdina · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

If you are like me, you haven't read Beowulf since high school and your memory of the story is probably pretty bad. I found reading this translation very enjoyable, and I loved having the "original" version printed opposite the translation (even though I couldn't read it).

[benuathanasia · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read this the first time in college. Then, I enjoyed the incredible rush of the adventure. This time around reading it, I ignored the forest to focus on the trees; I inhaled the beautiful poetry of the language. A wonderful, timeless adventure.

[sasham-1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I would have loved to have a glossary with in this book with a few explanations of some words and maybe a summary because the poetical form can make the story hard to follow

[qatarjj · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This poem has been around for about 1200 years so you know it's got to be good.

I can't help wonder how much the original oral version changed with the telling and retelling until some anonymous monk committed the story to paper, or at least vellum. I suspect he added his own touches, converting the pagan Northmen to Christians! Also how many stories did Beowulf influence? JRR Tolkien was something of a subject matter expert on Beowulf so it probably shaped the Lord of the Rings trilogy.

[a.witt · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I have never enjoyed a poem so thoroughly in my life. Beowulf was fascinating, beautiful, epic, and thought-provoking from beginning to end. And I am not just some sappy professor who thinks all the classics are inherently perfect. I'm a teenage girl, and I loved it.

[helenliz_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Another re-read prompted by the desert island books conversation. this is just fabulous. I know the original derives from a oral tradition, and I feel that this is designed to be read aloud, not to oneself. the meter is unlike the iambic rhythm we're so used to now, but the alliteration works and the lines sort of trip of the tongue. It's never a dull "te tum te tum te tum" thing - the words almost have a life of their own.
Add to that it's a swashbuckling story from the heroic to the unbearably sad and it just sweeps you away. Takes a bit of concentration, but that's no bad thing in a book.

[indreamsawake · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Read this in two different college classes, the first with a terrible professor and I hated it, the second time with a wonderful professor and I loved it! There is something to be said for teaching style.

[lhlogan1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Classically good and classically fun.

[lovinglit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This translated version has the Olde English verse written on the left page, and the modern English verse on the right page. As Heaney states in the introduction, he has tried with this translation to keep the language simple and as the original intended the meaning to be. He favoured meaning over rhyme, and as a consequence there is little rhyme. But the rhythm is certainly there and it reads very well. I was surprised at how accessible the story was, and how drawn in I was. There seemed to be some glaringly obvious similarities in storyline to The Hobbit...I am unsure as to whether this has been stated before I came to the conclusion, but is seemed so to me. The parts of the story that did get complicated were the family lineages and connections. But that didn't detract from the legend of Beowulf being as grand and fearsome as ever

[multifaceted_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

So. Beowulf. I have absolutely no knowledge of Old English--so I can't even begin to understand the original text on the even numbers of the pages--but I will say that it was fun to look over every now and then, sound out some of the real Old English words, and see where some of our words eventually evolved from. Heaney's translation, on the other hand, was pretty great, although I don't have any other versions to compare to. It was a fast paced read; after all, the original poet managed to pack 50 years and some royal feuds into 3000+ lines. Sometimes the reading goes so fast that I find myself stopping, looking back and trying to take in the complex poetic elements that Heaney managed to keep within the work, such as alliteration of one or two words within the two separate sections of a line; something that is very much in line with some of the elements Viking poets originally employed in their own language, as well. I kind of wished Heaney would have kept more of the kennings, though. Even though it can make reading more obtuse, I find it says just as much about the author and the times as it does about the person or thing the kenning is describing.The story itself is pretty simple; it's a fast paced tale of lords and changing kings, great deeds, and the eventual inevitability of death--it kind of makes me think of Gilgamesh, in a way. The "moral" I took from it was not only the unavoidable, eventual decline and death of life, but also of countries. The only slightly confusing thing for me was the descriptions of long-standing feuds between peoples, since I haven't had much of any experience with that part of history or the geography of the feuds outside of this story. I found the story a really interesting combination of Christian and Pagan beliefs. There's the beliefs in giants and monsters, only they're attributed to something such as a pre-flood like sinful, heathen time (in the case of the giants) or as the demonic offspring of Cain, the man cast out by God as the killer of his brother. There's mentions of things that have their roots in Norse myths, such as the "Brosinga" necklace around line 1197 (originally the Brisingamen, the necklace of the goddess Freyja once stolen by the god Loki), the story of Sigmund beginning at 884 (very similar to the Norse story of Sigurd, Sigmund's son, where the gold guarded by the dragon was begotten by a few of the Aesir gods from the dwarves, and cursed by the latter), or the mention of weapons engraved with "worm-loops" at 1532 (this recalls to mind Jormungand, the Midgard serpent who encircles the world, biting on his own tail). In Beowulf, most of these side stories are attributed to kings and queens alone, with no mention of gods. Then there's the mark of the Shieldings--the boar on their banners and helmets recalls the animal the Vanir god Freyr is often associated with keeping by his side or as the object of his sacrifices. Of course, Freyr was the god called upon for prosperity and protection in battle. And the most prominent thing of all; one of the most common "kennings" used for God in Beowulf is also one of the names for Odin--All-father.Oh! One more thing that stuck out to me was the women in Beowulf. I was intrigued by how often women figured in the Eddas--as goddesses, as Norns who wove fates, as Valkyries who chose the battle-slain, as the prophetic Volvas, and they were even pivotal characters in quite a few of the heroic lays. Beowulf, sadly, feels more like a reality. The women dole out the mead and maybe one or two of the smaller gifts to the heroes, and daughters are passed along as prizes to heroic lords or as a peace-treaty to kings of nearby nations. This obviously works out very well, right? And by "very well" I mean "hardly at all". Thanks, dad.

[janemarieprice · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This translation of Beowulf is excellent. It captures the spirit of the poetry without becoming too dense to read. I had read excerpts of the story for various classes and never enjoyed it. It is definitely something that you have to read the entire thing to find interesting.

[hermit_9_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

McNamara makes no bones about it. He is more interested in an accurate translation than in conveying the poetic feel of Beowulf. The poem offers a glimpse into pre-Christian European life, but it is so infused with Christian commentary (by the monks who transcribed and preserved the oral tradition) that it is difficult for a layman to separate what is real and what is overlay. Because McNamara focuses on pure translation, this version is fairly easy to read, given how and when it was originally written.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I can't give it five stars because it is a translation, and I can't tell how good the original in Old English is. But it does move along very nicely, and I'm not rooting for Grendel, his mother, or the dragon.It is set in southern Scandinavia, not in Northern England, but It is the start of written English. Another point is that we have only one copy, so, it wasn't a best seller in its time. But we have loved it since its first printing in 1815, and thus, I got to read it. It has no overt Christianity, and so is a window into the pagan mind, as it probably was, like the Iliad, a crystallization of a number of shorter orally transmitted poems into a coherent work. Scholars think that it was probably found in its longer form about 776 CE, and is written in the dialect of Northern England, not the Wessex speech. Everyone should read it, preferably aloud, as one reads "the Song of Roland".