Beowulf

Rating:
Summary: Superb translation!
Review: After reading about the immense influence of Beowulf on Tolkien in "Celebrating Middle-Earth", I reread it in this translation. It is powerful and moves along rapidly. It captures the strong yet poetic use of words and brings out changes of mood brilliantly.

Rating:
Summary: Superb translation!
Review: After reading about the immense influence of Beowulf on Tolkien in "Celebrating Middle-Earth", I reread it in this translation. It is powerful and moves along rapidly. It captures the strong yet poetic use of words and brings out changes of mood brilliantly.

Rating:
Summary: Fabulous!
Review: I am happy to report that buying this book has been one of those rare occasions when I have enjoyed the pleasant surprise of actually receiving MORE for my money than what I had been expecting.

I bought this book because of its containing the full text of Beowulf plus the running modern English translation on facing pages. In addition to this, I expected perhaps the usual brief introduction which such works are frequently accompanied by.

But instead, the book turned out to be about twice as thick as what I had anticipated. Yes, the first 50 pages or so are indeed the type of introduction and pronunciation guide I had expected, followed by the 200 pages containing the actual text and translation. But above and beyond this there is also an additional almost 200 pages to the book, and it is this portion which has made me doubly happy with my purchase.

Included in the second half of the book is a very helpful chart of the royal genealogies dealt with in the work. This is then followed by literally page after page of absolutely wonderful and extensive background material and analysis which deal with everything from the history of the manuscript and theories as to its authorship and dating, to broader background material on Anglo-Saxon society, its way of life and traditions. I found hours of fascinating and rewarding reading here which I never expected. It's almost like getting an extra book!

And as if this was not enough, to top it all off they have concluded the book with a section which gives full glosses for all the words in the 8 most key sections of the text. -- No need to spend hours frantically flipping in the dictionary, it's all here done for you!

Being a newcomer to the field of Old English, this book has been everything I have been looking for. And considering the modest price of this volume, I feel I have gotten a real bargain and am happy to give this book my highest recommendation to all.

Rating:
Summary: Good translation and more.
Review: I fell in love with Beowulf when I read Seamus Heany's facing page translation. I also fell in love with Anglo-Saxon Old English and decided to teach it to myself. I then bought John Porter's word for word facing page translation, which is good for learning Anglo-Saxon, but not for enjoying Beowulf as a rip-roaring adventure. I wanted to read another translation, to see how someone else would handle it, and the variety of translations available is amazing. Prose translations I hated. Even a modern poem turned into prose sounds wrong. Translations that ignor the alliteration and poem structure also bother me. I liked Howell Chickering's version. It's close to original feel of the poem. But the best thing about this book is Chickering's Commentary in the back. All the extra explanations were very helpful in understanding the poem. Questions that I had thought of are brought up and discussed. There are not always answers, but a thorough discussions of all the various theories. I thoroughly recommend this version.

Rating:
Summary: Touch the Real Poem
Review: If you read the Penguin edition (or any other modern translation) and wondered what all the fuss was about, this is your answer in a form accessible to the motivated reader. This monk-produced epic in an age when Christ challenged the devil at every turn and monsters and witchcraft were accepted as fact was crafted in language that rolls like a viking boat in stormy seas and cracks like lightning splintering a glacier. Here is a nuanced tale of life in a remote Germanic outpost haunted by a trinity of monsters and blessed by an able if flawed and mortal savior, a princeling knight errent compiling a couple of resume stuffers on his way to kinghood and then capping a great career with a final, defining epic deed.

The reader is provided with an intralinear translation, old english verse on one page, modern verse translation on the other. Vocabulary, pronunciation guides, and annotations are all provided. The sounds of this poetry are raw and powerful in a way that can only be weakly imitated in modern English, rich with wry, textured prosody. I found this book based on an offhand mention by a professor when I was in college, a two year search of university and second-hand bookstores without result, followed up over ten years later with an Amazon alert entry that finally bore fruit many years after that. A luminous accomplishment.

Rating:
Summary: A very solid translation with many wonderful helps
Review: This is a great edition of a great cultural treasure. It not only provides the original language text and a very solid modern English translation, it has a huge number of helps that enable the modern reader and student to delve deeply into the text. These helps allow those of us with no real knowledge of Old English to gain some appreciation of how our language has transformed over the centuries.

Professor Chickering provides a wonderful guide to reading the Old English version out loud, which is a lot of fun to try. He also provides important context giving background of the poetic structures from the old times and what we benefit from noticing as we read this exciting tale.

He also provides background material on the manuscript and what we know about the origins and culture that gave rise to Beowulf. There is also a wonderful commentary on many key concepts in the story that enrich the reading of the story.

There is also a bibliography for further reading and a listing of glosses on selected passages.

Yes, the Seamus Heaney translation is beautiful and readable, but this one is much more useful for the student who wants to dig more deeply into the story and how it fits into our cultural heritage.

Rating:
Summary: A very solid translation with many wonderful helps
Review: This is a great edition of a great cultural treasure. It not only provides the original language text and a very solid modern English translation, it has a huge number of helps that enable the modern reader and student to delve deeply into the text. These helps allow those of us with no real knowledge of Old English to gain some appreciation of how our language has transformed over the centuries.

Professor Chickering provides a wonderful guide to reading the Old English version out loud, which is a lot of fun to try. He also provides important context giving background of the poetic structures from the old times and what we benefit from noticing as we read this exciting tale.

He also provides background material on the manuscript and what we know about the origins and culture that gave rise to Beowulf. There is also a wonderful commentary on many key concepts in the story that enrich the reading of the story.

There is also a bibliography for further reading and a listing of glosses on selected passages.

Yes, the Seamus Heaney translation is beautiful and readable, but this one is much more useful for the student who wants to dig more deeply into the story and how it fits into our cultural heritage.

Rating:
Summary: Worthwhile
Review: This is a very good book for those interested in Beowulf. In fact, it's as close to my idea of an "ideal" version that I can find.

There are several different sections in this book, besides the text of the poem itself. There are technicial discussions on the poetry itself, and a guide to pronounciation. At the rear of the book are discussions of the historical context of the poem, both internal to the poem and external in the world. A lengthy commentary of the poem follows, then a bibliography, and finally a line-by-line glossary of some of the major sections of the poem.

The part that caught my eye was the "dual langauge" edition. The main text consists of the Anglo-Saxon version on the left-handed pages, and a modern English translation on the right-handed pages. The author states that alliteration in the translation was not a concern, and sometimes the translation does not follow the original word-for-word. Within each numbered five-line block, the translation does follow the original, so it's not too hard to follow both the original and the translation.

As a final comment, Caedmon Audio produces an audio edition read by Bessinger, and I find this is to be an excellent compliment to the book.

Rating:
Summary: Good little book
Review: Useful for learning Old English. Get a copy of Beowulf read in Anglo-Saxon on CD in order to help you speak Anglo-Saxon. It is lovely, but hard to speak. This is a good book to learn to write Asatru rituals, but to speak to the living Gods in their own tongue you'll need recorded readings of Anglo-Saxon to teach yourself Old English.
This book is old Enough to buy a used copy.
Even at the new prices it is worth it, for any student of Old English