Name: Beowulf
ISBN: 9780007590094

J.R.R. Tolkien

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication.

A Translation and Commentary, Together with Sellic Spell

Beowulf

Presents the prose translation of the Old English epic that Tolkien created as a young man, along with selections from lectures on the poem he gave later in life and a story and poetry he wrote in the style of folklore on the poem's themes.

A Translation and Commentary

Jeni Enjaian

I absolutely loved this book. It is much more than just the epic poem, Beowulf. It is chock full of detailed commentary from one of the foremost scholars of the 20th century in this subject. He also happens to be pretty popular in the general culture now thanks in large part to some highly successful movie adaptations of his critically acclaimed works of fiction. (If you can't tell that I'm a Tolkien fan by now...) 

The only thing that I would change about this book is everything written by Christopher Tolkien. While I admire what Christopher has done, all the painstaking research, edits and revisions he has made of his father's unpublished work, Christopher's own narratives come off sounding more than a bit pretentious. I wish he had taken himself out of the book and let his father's words and translation work speak for themselves.

That being said, I found the poem eminently readable. I am not a scholar in Old English or poetry or any related field so I do not feel qualified to speak to the accuracy and validity of Tolkien's translation. However, his included lecture notes make it eminently obvious that Tolkien devoted careful thought and diligent research to this translation.

These lecture notes are absolutely fascinating to read. (I repeat my earlier statement about Christopher Tolkien. Everything he inserted in this section distracted from and interrupted the narrative flow of the lecture notes.) These notes made me long for the ability to travel in time just so that I could sit in on these lectures in person.

I also enjoyed the book because of the strong evidence that Tolkein drew much of his inspiration for Rohan (specifically) and Middle Earth (generally) from not just Beowulf but the entire time period and languages. (Thus why I have several huge issues with many of the artistic choices Peter Jackson made with, specifically the Hobbit movies. Tolkien intended to create Lord of the Rings as a mythology for Britain. Thus, there would have been no other ethnicities aside from primarily Germanic and Celtic people groups. I'm off on a rabbit trail though.)

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in the classics as well as aficionados of Tolkien;s works of fiction.

New York Times bestseller "A thrill . . . Beowulf was Tolkien's lodestar. Everything he did led up to or away from it . . . Perhaps, in the dark of night, he already knew what would happen: that he would never publish his beautifulBeowulf, and that his intimacy with the poem, more beautiful, would remain between him and the poet—a secret love."—New Yorker The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book. From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel's terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot. But the commentary in this book includes also much from those lectures in which, while always anchored in the text, he expressed his wider perceptions. He looks closely at the dragon that would slay Beowulf "snuffling in baffled rage and injured greed when he discovers the theft of the cup"; but he rebuts the notion that this is "a mere treasure story", "just another dragon tale". He turns to the lines that tell of the burying of the golden things long ago, and observes that it is "the feeling for the treasure itself, this sad history" that raises it to another level. "The whole thing is sombre, tragic, sinister, curiously real. The 'treasure' is not just some lucky wealth that will enable the finder to have a good time, or marry the princess. It is laden with history, leading back into the dark heathen ages beyond the memory of song, but not beyond the reach of imagination." Sellic spell, a "marvellous tale", is a story written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folk-tale of Beowulf, in which there was no association with the "historical legends" of the Northern kingdoms.

Alanna Hammond

I'm taking a Tolkien class this semester and this was one of our foundational texts. I liked how Tolkien translated the piece but overall, Beowulf is not my favorite piece of literature. It can very wordy at times and confusing.

Beowulf A Translation and Commentary, Together with Sellic Spell

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