Beowulf

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Summary: Ian Myles Slater on: The Text Edition, Not the Audio
Review: Amazon has linked, as equivalent editions, and for reviews, two entirely distinct products. One is a recording of David Rintoul reading a translation of "Beowulf" into modern English -- presumably Michael Alexander's "Beowulf: A Verse Translation" in the Penguin Classics series. It has been linked to a separate volume in the Penguin Classics series, Michael Alexander's *edition* of the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) *text* of the early medieval poem. (I won't be more specific; pick a date after about 750 and before about 1020, you'll find a backer.)

Since Old English is a language about as different from Modern English as the latter is from, say, German, you are going to have to be careful to figure out exactly which item the reviewers are talking about -- if they get that specific. Detailed appreciations of "Beowulf" do not constitute, to my mind, a review of any particular edition, translation, or recorded reading. (Even when I agree with them; a great poem.)

Michael Alexander's text edition offers something unusual, in both the Penguin Classics series and among "Beowulf editions." It is conservatively edited -- that is, it uses consensus readings from recent critical and student editions, with no original departures in the way of conjectural emendations, etc. But instead of either a dictionary-style glossary OR a facing translation, he offers word by word glosses to each line on the page facing the Old English text. The words there are not given in the inflected or conjugated forms in which they appear in the text, but as a dictionary-style head-words. For example, in line 1590, the word "becearf" is identified by the infinitive, "beceorfan," meaning "cut off."

This is actually quite convenient for a student working with a basic textbook, more so than a conventional glossary or dictionary; instead of remembering sound-laws to find the base form, *before* looking it up, you can check your recollection against a grammatical table, or, for the some of the odder "strong" verbs, look it up to identify the type, and then work out the details. (If you haven't studied Old English, or German, trust me; that would mean a lot to you.) Additionally, for fairly long stretches, it is possible to make out a good deal of sense with just the raw vocabulary -- although hardly enough to get a real sense of the poem.

For some passages, Alexander offers footnoted translations of sentences; usually giving his solution to recognized difficulties, where the syntax is exceptionally tangled, or the train of thought depends on ideas obscure to modern readers. Although the main text does not offer information on how Alexander arrived at his readings, or suggest alternatives, there is an eleven-page list of "Manuscript Readings' indicating where unintelligible, broken, or missing words have been emended or supplemented.

This is not a substitute for a fuller introductory edition, like George Jack's "Beowulf: A Student Edition" (1994; one of Alexander's sources). And it certainly doesn't compare to Robinson and Mitchell's more comprehensive "Beowulf: An Edition With Relevant Shorter Texts" (1998), the successive revisions of Wrenn's text by Michael Bolton (fifth edition, 1997 ) or Friedrich Klaeber's venerable but invaluable "Beowulf: and The Fight at Finnsburg" (third edition, 1936; with supplements 1941, 1950). But it is not intended to be.

In conjunction with a good textbook on the language, it would make a fine entry into the poem, in place of the very limited excerpts from the 3182-line poem usually given in a "Grammar and Reader."

And for those who have studied the poem in the original, it is a pleasant, and easily-handled refresher, without the constant presence of an "authoritative" voice, as in the bilingual editions of Seamus Heaney's celebrated recent translation (itself rather too literary for this purpose, actually), or Chickering's older "Beowulf: A Dual Language Edition."

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Summary: One of teh greatest English poem of all times
Review: Beowulf is a masterpiece of English literature, the mastermind of all the authors, playwrights, and many other artists coming after it. The language is rather difficult because it is Anglosaxon. But the book gives systematic notes about the words, and only the words, of the poems. Some of these notes are vague if not faultive. One example : page 51, the word « eorl » is given as meaning « man » on line 761 et « warrior » on line 769, without any more ado. We do regret that these lexical notes are not collected into a lexicon, which would save many repetitions and make it easier to find the word one is looking for. We also regret that there are no notes about the « grammar », « morphology » or « syntax » of Anglosaxon. We thus miss a lot, for example the feminine, masculine and neuter genders, and this is absolutely essential. One example : « Beowulf » is the association of the feminine « beo » meaning « bee » and the masculine « wulf » meaning « wolf ». Yet one can, if one has a good lexicon or dictionary and a good « grammar » of Anglosaxon, get into these subtleties. And then the poem is remarkably beautiful. I am not going to insist on the mirror it is for the christianizing of the old scandinavian, germanic and probably celtic mythology. This is not commonly studied, but I would like to insist on another element : the structure of the poem. The very first part is absolutely typical of the old culture : Beowulf goes out against some monsters who have survived from a very old period, a very old race (the giants who have been locked up in some mountain by the Gods of this religion), and he conquers glory and fame. There is no « fate » in this section, or very little. Beowulf is a young « adventurer » who blazes his trail through the world and history. Then there is a long transition from this glorious age to old age and death and there a new discourse appears and builds itself in the poem : man has to assume some fate that comes from God. Man has to stand up in front of his fate, no matter what it may bring, because it is his divine dimension that demands it. This is both Christian and germanic. So Beowulf is courageous and tries to bring good living conditions to his people because that is his responsibility in front of God, be he the Christian God or Odin, or the « weird sisters » of Shakespeare, the three Norns, Urd, Vervandi and Skuld. But the last part goes beyond this rather non-defined transition. Beowulf has to fight again against a monster, this time a dragon. This fight is Christian in many ways because the dragon is a reference to the « Book of Revelations », or Daniel's dragon Bel. It is Christian because Beowulf will give the order to bury forever the hoard of this dragon for two reasons : men are not supposed to be greedy any more, and this hoard comes from very old periods of human history and represents the culture of these old centuries. Greed is a capital sin and these old centuries have to be rejected, along with their culture and religion. But, yet, Beowulf is a man who carries the culture of past ages and his burial is typically that of a hero of the past : the pyre, the cremation, though not with a woman, wife or servant or slave, or any other human being who would sacrifice him/herself or be sacrificed to the dead man ; the twelve children going around the tomb represent the twelve rune, Eoh or Eihwaz, the yew tree, a symbol of death in germanic culture, a symbol of Odin's final battle, the Ragnarok, the end of the world, brought down by a general war among all human races and gods alike, with maybe the promise of a regeneration. This death is a tremendous mixing of Christian and Germanic beliefs, though this death is christianized in its perspective : to bring peace to the world, to reject greed, to look for a regeneration of the soul, to believe that man can improve. And yet it is the negation of the « Thing » political system of this culture : the king, who should be elected by the people, is here designated if not appointed by the dying king, Beowulf, in the face of death and God. This is in a way a justification of God-anointed kingship, hence the shift from the old germanic « Thing » democracy to a feudal God-appointed kingship. That poem is definitely one of the most powerful and important poems of English culture. It should be studied in depth by all students or scholars who want to understand anything about the English mind ; even today and probably tomorrow.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

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Summary: The Real Deal!
Review: Beowulf is the longest and oldest Germanic Epic that has survived. Our vision of the Ancient Germanic world is coloured by the Icelandic prose writers of the 13th and 14th Centuries: at a time when Old Germanic culture was dissolving into the Feudal Era. With a composition date of around 800 A.D. this national poem of the Saxons takes us back much further than the sagas do; other than a few stuck-on references to God, the whole thing is entirely pagan Germanic. It is a real miracle that this epic has survived for us! We too can enter the word-world of the old Saxon warriors. The best way to do this is of course to read the real thing: i.e. the epic poem in Anglo-Saxon. This heavily glossed edition allows you to do just that! You will need to know a few other things though, such as declensions and conjugations, but they are easily learnt: '-a' is genitive plural, and '-um' is dative plural; '-on' is the past plural ending (so, 'writ-on' means 'they wrote'). The rest of the grammar is more or less like that of Shakespeare. About 67% of the words in the epic are still used in modern English, so you'll be able to de-modernize your language very quickly! Pick up your 'bill ond byrnum' and go to battle standing beside your ancient ancestors!

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Summary: A study of the language
Review: Hi! I am a freshman in high school. I too, have suffered through countless reading the required books/poetry for Honors English. Beowulf really got my attention. It is a beautiful poem and the language is mellifluous to read aloud. The composer cut out a lot of fluff that many poets thrith on. It was short and to the point, but had strong themes to leave me spellbound afterwards. It is a beautiful epic poem.

Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: Hi! I am a freshman in high school. I too, have suffered through countless reading the required books/poetry for Honors English. Beowulf really got my attention. It is a beautiful poem and the language is mellifluous to read aloud. The composer cut out a lot of fluff that many poets thrith on. It was short and to the point, but had strong themes to leave me spellbound afterwards. It is a beautiful epic poem.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant!
Review: Professor Alexander is quite simply the world's greatest authority on Old English Literature, and this edition of Beowulf brings the poem to life. I am not interested in the audio version - David Rintoul may be very good but all he did was read it. The only things to be praised here are the masterful editing skills or Prof. Alexander. All I can say is he must have gone to Oxford University.

Rating:
Summary: A study of the language
Review: This is an excellent book for those who wish to study the original language, and Anglo-Saxon verse. The editor does not include a lot of distracting material, nor are there deep discussions of the theological, allegorical, sociological, etc etc, implications of the poem.

Instead, what you have is a book which has the original text on the left pages, and glosses on right pages. Not 100% of the words are glossed, such as "and". The glosses are all standardized as nom. singular nouns and inf. verbs. This means that the reader should know, or perhaps will learn from reading, the grammar of the language.

A lot of people seem to know about Beowulf, but have no clue what it is. A lot people also consider Old English to be some quaint "high mode" of english, spoken by Knights in Shining Armor.

Some are "forced" to study the poem, in school. And there are those who want to study the poem, for whateve reason.

This book should be useful to all who are interested, or need to be interested.