Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

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:
A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell

Front cover of the 2014 hardback edition, titled "Hringboga Heorte Gefysed"
Editor	Christopher Tolkien
Author	Anonymous (Beowulf) J. R. R. Tolkien (Sellic Spell)
Translator	J. R. R. Tolkien
Cover artist	J. R. R. Tolkien
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English, Old English
Subject	Old English poetry
Genre	Epic poetry
Published	22 May 2014
Publisher	HarperCollins Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Pages	425 (Hardback)
ISBN	978-0-00-759006-3
OCLC	875629841
Preceded by	The Fall of Arthur
Followed by	The Story of Kullervo

In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the aid of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf kills him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After fifty years have passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland.

The translation is followed by a commentary on the poem that became the base for Tolkien's acclaimed 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics".[1] Furthermore, the book includes the previously unpublished "Sellic Spell" and two versions of "The Lay of Beowulf". The former is a fantasy piece on Beowulf's biographical background while the latter is a poem on the Beowulf theme.[2]

Background

J. R. R. Tolkien specialized in English philology at university and in 1915 graduated with Old Norse as special subject. In 1920, he became Reader in English Language at the University of Leeds, where he claimed credit for raising the number of students of linguistics from five to twenty. He gave courses in Old English heroic verse, history of English, various Old English and Middle English texts, Old and Middle English philology, introductory Germanic philology, Gothic, Old Icelandic, and Medieval Welsh.[3] Having read Beowulf earlier, he began a translation of the poem which he finished in 1926 but never published. Acocella writes that Tolkien may not have had the time to pursue a publication when he moved to Oxford and began to write his novel The Hobbit. Tolkien's biographer Humphrey Carpenter argues that Tolkien was too much of a perfectionist to publish his translation.[4]

Ten years later, however, Tolkien drew upon this work when he gave a lecture "Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics". According to this lecture, the true theme of Beowulf, namely death and defeat, was being neglected in favour of archaeological and philological disputes on how much of the poem was fictive or true.[4]

Plot

Main article: Beowulf

Beowulf, a prince of the Geats, and his followers set out to help king Hroðgar of the Danes in his fight against the monster Grendel. Because Grendel hates music and noise he frequently attacks Hroðgar's mead hall Heorot killing the king's men in their sleep. While Beowulf cannot kill Grendel directly in their first encounter, he still wounds him fatally. Afterwards he has to face Grendel's mother who has come to avenge her son. Beowulf follows her to a cavern beneath a lake where he slays her with a magical sword. There he finds the dying Grendel and decapitates him.

Beowulf returns home to become king of the Geats. After some 50 years, a dragon whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound begins to terrorize Geatland. Beowulf, now in his eighties, tries to fight the dragon but cannot succeed. He follows the dragon to his lair where Beowulf's young relative Wiglaf joins him in the fight. Eventually, Beowulf slays the dragon but is mortally wounded. In the end, his followers bury their king in a mound by the sea.

Reception

Tolkien's translation of Beowulf has been compared to Seamus Heaney's translation from 2000. Joan Acocella writes that since Tolkien was not a professional poet like Heaney, he had to make compromises in translating the original Old English epic. According to Acocella, Heaney's focus on rhyme and alliteration makes him occasionally lose details from the original that remain in Tolkien's prose version.[4] Tolkien's version stays closer to the details and rhythm of the original and extremely close to the original sense of the poem, which has been attributed to Tolkien's scholarly knowledge of Old English, whereas Heaney, on the other hand, succeeded in producing a translation suited for the modern reader, more so than Tolkien's.[4][5]

The publication caused some controversy among scholars. Beowulf expert and University of Kentucky professor Kevin Kiernan, called it a "travesty", and criticism was also offered by Harvard professor Daniel Donoghue.[6] Writing for Business Insider, Kiernan cites J. R. R. Tolkien himself who disliked his own translation. According to Kiernan, any prose translation of Beowulf will neglect the "poetic majesty" of the original.[7] University of Birmingham lecturer Philippa Semper instead called the translation "captivating" and "a great gift to anyone interested in Beowulf or Tolkien."[5] Michael D. C. Drout wrote in his review[8] "The exclusion of [Tolkien's] alliterative poetic translation from the edition is more puzzling. This translation is a well-done piece of poetry, truer to the original in both form and content than any other poetic translation of Beowulf. ...general readers would very likely enjoy the poetic translation more than they will the prose."

Writing in The New York Times, Ethan Gilsdorf comments that Tolkien had been skeptical about putting Beowulf into modern English, and had written in his 1940 essay On Translating Beowulf that turning the poem "into 'plain prose' could be an 'abuse'."[9] Gilsdorf continues, "But he did it anyway"; Tolkien remarked that the result "was 'hardly to my liking'."[9]

References

Citations

1. "JRR Tolkien's Beowulf translation to be published". BBC News. 20 March 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
2. "Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary". Publishers Weekly. 26 May 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
3. Carpenter 1981, letter No. 7 harvnb error: no target: CITEREFCarpenter1981 (help)
4. Acocella, Joan (2 June 2014). "Slaying Monsters: Tolkien's 'Beowulf'". The New Yorker. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
5. Worrall, Patrick (22 May 2014). "Tolkien's Beowulf: a 'great gift'". Channel 4. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
6. "Hwæt? a new academic spat over Tolkien". London Evening Standard. 21 May 2014. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
7. Kiernan, Kevin (2 June 2014). "Why Tolkien Hated His Translation Of Beowulf". Business Insider. Retrieved 8 June 2014.
8. Drout, Michael (2015). "Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell by J.R.R. Tolkien (review)". Tolkien Studies. 12: 149–173. doi:10.1353/tks.2015.0014.
9. Gilsdorf, Ethan (18 May 2014). "Waving His Wand at 'Beowulf'". The New York Times.

Works cited

• Carpenter, Humphrey, ed. (1981), The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-395-31555-7