Slashdot Mirror
Tolkien and the Beowulf Saga
jackalski sent in this story about a translation of the Beowulf epic by J.R.R. Tolkien being discovered and which is now set to be published next year. Tolkien found Beowulf inspirational.
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
He also did a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight which (in the copy I have) is bundled with translations of both Perl and Sir Orfeo. IMHO his translation of Sir Gawain is much better than the one we were forced to read in my high school english class. Would have been cool to have had a copy of his Beowulf translation to compare to the one we had.
I dont know of any online shops that carry the book, but the ISBN number is 0-345-27760-0 if you want to look for it or special order.
I really like Tolkien, but I had to really push myself to get through the Silmarillion... Somehow a line by line explanation strikes me as being much less than 'exciting'!
a ^= b; b ^= a; a ^= b;
Hmmm, I must have read a severely truncated version in high school, because I only remember three supernatural creatures in "Beowulf" -- Grendel, Grendel's mom, and the Dragon.
Speaking of Grendel, there's a great novel by the same name written by John Gardner.
Back on topic, Gardner wrote an interesting article on Tolkien and his world.
Why do that when there are plenty of Tolkien authored works yet to be filmed - the Hobbit hasn't been done, at least not on the scale of LotR, some stories from the Silmarillion could be filmed if you were desperate, and there are umpteen "Unfinished Tales".
It's of more interest as an example of his inspiration, and it'd be interesting to see Tolkien's take on Beowulf. It's not going to be a massive seller to the general public, who probably have enough trouble getting through LotR, but for those who are interested it'll definitely be worth a look.
Don't assume that everything is marketing. While it's often the case, believing it of everything will make you as shallow as the advertisers who push that idea.
Looks like publishers are really looking forward to cashing in on the Tolkien-hype we've been getting nowadays.
I am looking forward to reading this though. Besides the handwriting, is the fingerprint the only proof that this was written by Tolkien? Does his son know about this?
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
This will be wonderful. He had already translated Pearl and Sir Orfeo, two Middle English pieces before he died, plus Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. These are very different pieces though, much more lyrical and romantic. Perhaps the best known translation he did which will compare with this is of a fragment (about 100 lines) of an Anglo Saxon piece called "The Death of Beorthelm". He wrote a sequel, The Homecoming of Beortnoth Beorthelms' Son, as well.
I am interested to see how his Beowulf will compare with Seamus Heaney's truly masterful work, published a couple of years ago. However, given that Heaney is a poet, and Tolkien was a philologist, I sha'n't be surprised if they differ widely...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Sometimes I think he'd dig up his father's bones, wire them up on puppet strings, and tour them around the world if it could make him more money. Unlike the posthumous "Lost Tales" this find is by a creditable third party, attributable in its entirety to Daddy T, and the royalties shall no doubt flow as thick as orc blood at Helm's Deep. Christopher dreams happy dreams tonight.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
If anyone is interested in reading _Beowulf_, they should get the Seamus Heaney translation. It's difficult to imagine anything better than this. I read the story in high school and again in both college and graduate school but it wasn't until I read the Heaney translation that I understood what all the fuss was about. It's an incredible book and it seems to have taken the ear of a poet to get the translation right.
And if you get a chance to hear someone who can read the original, go to it. Just gorgeous stuff even if it's pretty tough to follow.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
The Sunday Times article regarding this conflates Prof. Drout's story of his 'coming upon' Tolkien's essay "Beowulf and the Critics" (the precursor of his British Academy lecture, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics"),
Drout's edition of which has just been published, with the fact that he is now working on an edition of Tolkien's Modern English
(alliterative and prose) translations of _Beowulf_. The article gets a number of other things wrong too. Not to diminish Michael Drout's
moment of personal discovery or his achievement in his new book, but the existence of "Beowulf and
the Critics" was known before he saw it: it was listed long ago in a public catalogue of the Tolkien papers at the Bodleian. It just wasn't
published. As for Tolkien's _Beowulf_ translation, this has been even better known: cited three times, for example, in the 1993 Tolkien _Descriptive Bibliography_ -- and brief portions of it have been published, e.g. in Tolkien's "Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation
of 'Beowulf'", originally his preface to the 1940 edition of _Beowulf_ translated by John R. Clark Hall, and in Hammond and Scull, _J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist & Illustrator_ alongside two drawings by Tolkien of Grendel's Mere.
...to those who now want to read Beowulf:
Don't. Listen to it instead. It was a myth, part of an oral tradition. You really don't get the same thing out of reading it.
There's a recording available of Seamus Heaney reading his translation of it here.
Triv
A translation can make a huge difference. For example, I was reading Aristophanes' "The Clouds", and I was reading a good translation. It was hilarious - like an Ancient Greek episode of the Simpsons (a good episode). My friend, who had a crappy translation, hated it and found it humorless. For example, when the lizard shits in Socrates' face, my book says "a lizard shitted on his face!", which is funny, whereas my friend's book says something like "a lizard befouled upon him.", which isn't.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
But ever wonder how things like this seem to pop up when something is very popular??
This sounds like a Hollywood insider special edition timming event
There are other translations, you know, if you're one of those people who reads the book before seeing the movie, maybe read one translation before the other?
http://www.lone-star.net/literature/beowulf/
I agree with your sentiment. I found Brin's article to be typical of Salon and psuedo-intellectualism in general. He categorically confused Romanticism with medieval politics, and failed to address any of Tolkien's qualms about modern pragmatism. Virtually all of his points about what Tolkien supported are not true even on a superficial level (considering that the Shire was democratic and later ruled by a gardener, Tolkien specifically criticized the macho elements of Romanticism through Boromir/Faramir, and women like Eowyn and Luthien were immensely capable) and his writing was condescending to the extreme. I'm glad I'm not the only one who disliked that piece.
Rob
People forget that Tolkien was one of the world's great authorities on all forms of Northen European Lang. and Lit. He had a lot more than Beowulf to draw on. Many linguists have commented on how much Tolkien leaned on Finnish when he created Elvish.
Disclaimer: IAAEMBNAP (I am an english major, but not a professor)
When reading LOTR I always felt that Tolken used heroic and Arthurian styleing and language to wonderful effect. The first time I read LOTR when I was younger I felt that he must have just gotten confused near the end of his work when he extensively used heroic language, now re-reading it with a bit deeper appreciation of literary technique I am always impressed with the appropriateness of Tolken's use of heroic and Arthurian language. It's plain that Tolken used his intense immersion in the language of Heroic and Arthurian epics (imagine how intense the immersion must have been to learn the original language and then create a translation) to good effect in his writing.
Having read Beowulf, Sir Gwain and the Green Knight, and LOTR all within the last 6 months a few distinct stylistic parallels have stood out to me. The romance between Eowyn and Aragorn is scented with the aura of Arthurian legends. They were always big on a sort of strange courtly love that at times bordered on infidelity, but was apparently socially acceptable. (Think Lancelot and Gwenevire). When looked at in the context of Arthurian legends the story of Eowyn and Aragorn makes a wonderful kind of sense, but without that context it can be a bit confusing. Likely that is why the movie chose to portray that story in a manner which isn't quite faithful to the literary effect of the book.
The other strong prominent Aurtherian influence in LOTR seems to be the importance of 'doing the right thing'. While heroic epics like Beowulf, (and the Odyssey and others for that matter) are centered completely around the hero and his conception of right and wrong, Arthurian epics are based on a definite moral code, and their conflicts often rest on the 'the code' conflicting with the heroes personal desires. Look at the conflict between destroying the ring (the absolute good) and various characters' desires to use the ring to fulfill personal desires.
The most Heroic "Beowulf'ian" part of LOTR is its' "improbability." In a heroic epic it's much more important for the story to come to its rightful conclusion than to have the taste of realism. Therefore it's perfectly acceptable, (and probably necessary) for Beowulf or Aragorn to perform unbelievable feats of strength, valor, or leadership. If the reader can get over their sense of the impossible, the feat's unbelievable'ness and the language's brief matter of fact descriptions will just push the reader further into the fantasy world and develop their feelings about the hero.
Tragically post reads too much like an essay I'd write for an English class, but I was just impressed with the distinctness of the parallels when I read the article. The moral is that Tolken's study of Beowulf and Sir Gwain and the Green Knight probably had a bit to do with the way that LOTR turned out.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.