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The commentary, occupying over 200 pages, provides a detailed picture of how he saw Beowulf, sometimes taking several pages for a short passage of the poem, and giving his interpretation of difficult words or allusions by the poet. The commentary formed the basis of Tolkien's acclaimed 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics". [1] [2]
The essays are: "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" looks at the critics' understanding of Beowulf, and proposes instead a fresh take on the poem. "On Translating Beowulf " looks at the difficulties in translating the poem from Old English. "On Fairy-Stories", the 1939 Andrew Lang lecture at St Andrew's University, is a defence of the ...
Many editions of the Old English text of Beowulf have been published; this section lists the most influential. The Icelandic scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin made the first transcriptions of the Beowulf-manuscript in 1786, working as part of a Danish government historical research commission. He had a copy made by a professional copyist who ...
Over a thousand years ago, a writer (or writers) penned an epic poem about a warrior named Beowulf who must defeat an evil monster (the story is replete with power struggles, lots of killing and ...
Title page of Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, 1936 "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem Beowulf. It was first published as a paper in the Proceedings of the British Academy, and has since been reprinted in many collections.
Tolkien ends the essay with an analysis of lines 210–228 of Beowulf, providing the original text, marked up with stresses and his metrical patterns for each half-line, as well as a literal translation with poetical words underlined. He notes that there are three words for boat and for wave, five for men, four for sea: in each case some are ...
The difficulty of translating Beowulf from its compact, metrical, alliterative form in a single surviving but damaged Old English manuscript into any modern language is considerable, [1] matched by the large number of attempts to make the poem approachable, [2] and the scholarly attention given to the problem.
The first two, A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary and Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg: A Translation into Modern English Prose, quickly became authoritative works that went through four editions each. [34] [35] Hall's third book, a translation of Swedish essays on Beowulf by Knut Stjerna, was similarly influential. [36]