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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.
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Imagine a beowulf of the... uh..
a Beowulf cluster....oh.
I only mod up parents of "mod parent up" posts...
Cause in this day and age it wouldn't even begin to surprise me.
Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
New Tolkien book discovered
December 30, 2002
A YELLOWING manuscript by J.R.R.Tolkien discovered in an Oxford library could become one of the publishing sensations of 2003.
The 2000 handwritten pages include Tolkien's translation and appraisal of Beowulf, the epic 8th century Anglo-Saxon poem of bravery, friendship and monster-slaying that is thought to have inspired The Lord of the Rings.
He borrowed from early English verse to concoct the imaginary language spoken by Arwen, played by Liv Tyler, and other elves in the second film made from the Rings books, The Two Towers.
A US academic, Michael Drout, found the Tolkien material by accident in a box of papers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford.
An assistant professor of English at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, Dr Drout was researching Anglo- Saxon scholarship at the Bodleian, and asked to see a copy of a lecture on Beowulf given by Tolkien in 1936.
It was brought to him in a reading room in a large box. Professor Drout, who reads Anglo-Saxon prose to his two-year-old daughter at bedtime, said: "I was sitting there going through the transcripts when I saw these four bound volumes at the bottom of the box.
"I started looking through, and realised I had found an entire book of material that had never seen the light of day. As I turned the page, there was Tolkien's fingerprint in a smudge of ink."
After obtaining permission from the Tolkien estate, Professor Drout published Beowulf and the Critics, a version of Tolkien's 1936 lecture, in the US earlier this month.
Even more exciting will be Tolkien's translation of the poem and his line-by-line interpretation of its meaning, which will be published next summer.
Tolkien's name on the cover is likely to make the translation a bestseller.
Professor Drout says Tolkien found inspiration for many of his storylines and characters in Beowulf. The Anglo-Saxon hero's friendship with Wiglaf is mirrored in the relationship between Frodo and Sam in The Lord of the Rings.
Elves, orcs and ents, the latter a type of giant that becomes a walking and talking tree in Tolkien's work, are all mentioned in Beowulf.
Merlin Unwin, son of Tolkien's original publisher, said: "Beowulf is a wonderful story, and if you put Tolkien's name to it, it would probably be a great commercial success."
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.
just in time for the book to be released as an EBOOK with DRM!!!
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;
I suppose it's an easy way to squeeze another film out of the 'ring' marketing machines... Stamp Tolkien's name to a manuscript, shove it in the bottom of a box, and have a dusty librarian dig it up for you. Instant next-year's-script..
Wonder how many aspiring writers will be picking up on this new publication method in the coming years?
It's a timeless tale and Tolkein is a great author, this won't reach the best seller list because of the name of the author, but because I'm sure it will be great. Such a shame that it has been hidden for so long.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
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.
"I started looking through, and realised I had found an entire book of material that had never seen the light of day. As I turned the page, there was Tolkien's fingerprint in a smudge of ink."
If you have Tolkien's fingerprint memorized, it's safe to say you REALLY NEED A NEW HOBBY.
I feel sorry for this guy's daughter.
Know text.
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
unless he took a dramatic twist of the text, you're still forced reading the same epic that you were forced to read in highschool... if you are looking for a good twist on the topic, read john gardner's grendel.
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
When every other possible usage of Lord of the Rings movie series.
In all seriousness, I would love to see a (commedy) movie made out of this. image.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
It'll be on #bookz (undernet) long before it's ever ebook, without DRM!! Long live warez
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!
(duck) :)
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
There would be a CR violation in using Tolkien's name on his translation, except the article clearly says that the professor who found the manuscript got permission from Tolkien's estate to publish it. Thus, the "Tolkien's Beowulf" to be published next year will not be an infringement, since it was done with permission. Indeed, the story of beowulf is in the public domain, but any translation of it would be a derivative work protectible by copyright. If you spent 2 years of your life translating beowulf, I don't have the right to steal your translation and publish it just because the story you translated from is in the public domain. We all know disney steals stuff from the public domain (Brother's Grimm, etc) to base their stories on, and they get subsequent copyrights. Way it works.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
Image a beowulf of these connected by Tolkien-ring with DRM and I'm not going to buy one until it supports the Ogg Vorbis format and ...oh, I'll just STFU now...
My
Limekiller
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.
I can hardly wait to see the Salon article by Hugo Award Winner David Brin(TM) telling us how Grendel is the good guy saving the dainty little things of civilization from barbaric heathens like Beowulf.
Seastead this.
First and foremost I think that Tokien was inspired by the war he fought in, WW1: Huge battles and complex alliances between murky powers in which little English folk from the countryside get caught up, don't fully understand, and yet trust that somehow they are acting for the better--meanwhile massive slaughter, marshes full of dead people, and so on.
On the literary side, though, he does seem to have borrowed from all sorts of great legends. I'm sure Beowulf must be one, as the LOTR, etc., are quests. Tolkien clearly believes (in his stories anyway) in caste society: dividing people up into noble classes, low classes, and so on--the line of kings figures prominently in his work.
Moreover his creation mythology interestingly enough mixes the Christian mythology of Lucifer into a Norse mythology setting. You have Melkor rebelling against Eru much as Lucifer rebelled against God, and the whole Melkor/Morgoth/Sauron thing sounds remarkably like the story of Lucifer's fall from grace. And you have the Elves being kicked out of Valinor much as Christian mythology has men being kicked out of the Garden of Eden--with the twist of free choice.
And yet the whole thing is in a Norse mythological setting--with the gods living in great halls across the ocean--and you could even sail there if you were a good enough seafarer, and a range of gods who are somehow a higher caste than men, and yet somehow also their equals. (The Vala, Elves and Men all having been created by the same maker, Eru).
In a way I think much of British quest literature has been an attempt to weave the old tales of Beowulf into the fabric of Christian mythology, and I think that's exactly what Tolkien does.
...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
Tolkien scholars have known about the Beow. translation and commentary for decades. This is nothing but a blatant attempt by either the publisher or the scholar to hype and market their book. It wasn't 'discovered'. It has always been in the Tolkien Collection at the Dept. of Western Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. And thus available to any qualified scholar. However, in all fairness, Michael Drout (the editor), may probably be the first scholar to actually have the time, motivation and energy to accomplish the task of actually getting this thing published. Also, I believe the figure of 2000 pages sounds a bit inflated, its far less than that. In my view, Tolkien's Beow. work would probably have been published by now by the Tolkien Estate if they had thought it worthwhile. But with any book selling like crazy that has Tolkien's name on it: Now is the time to do it.
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/
It didn't resemble Eaters of the Dead or the 13th warrior at all. The section of the work dealing with Grendel resembled it only in the sense that there was cannabilism, and that's about it.
Like others have said, Eaters of the Dead was based on real (as in existing, if not true) historical manuscripts written by the travalling Arab.
At first, you just looked misinformed. Now YOU are revealed to be a schmuck.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Nothing new here, he read the stuff in its original. As you all should if you're so intrigued - good resume filler.
If you REALLY want to experience Beowulf as it was meant to be experienced, LISTEN to it, don't read it! Even better, listen to it in the original Old English instead of a translation. The alliterative prose of the original is very powerful.
When I was in college I held a reading of it at night on the beach around a roaring bon fire. I began reading a verse translation, but would slip into Old English at key points to accentuate the action. It worked really well, and people who didn't understand Old English still thought it was fantastic.
There's an unabridged version on CD, however there is an abridged version on tape recorded in 1962 that sounds better, if you can find it.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
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.
Well ... if you really wanna see my interpretation of Beowulf ... here you go Benini Bewulfo it's an old encode, and not one of my finer works.
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
From the report:
Tolkien's name on the cover is likely to make the translation a bestseller.
I find this sad. What would be more praiseworthy would be if what was to make it a bestseller were the fact that somebody might be interested in another side to Tolkien. However, I suspect that this will be a huge bestseller that few purchasers will take the real time and effort required to understand in the context of Tolkien's major influences, and specifically Anglo-Saxon literature.
My guess is n copies bought, n/10 copies read through.
Of course, I am just an 3l33tist...
Call me old fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating - Bender
Unfortunately Heaney's translation got involved with a fixup by the booker prize committee which put off a lot of people.
Not many literature buffs here, I guess. The Booker Prize is given for new fiction, and so Heaney's Beowulf isn't even eligible.
However, the two books did go head to head in 1999 for a somewhat less influential award, the Whitbread Prize. Both Heaney and Rowling won in their respective categories (poetry and children's), but the Whitbread judges go on to pick a "book of the year" from all the winners, and they did pick Beowulf as the book of the year.
That aside, I really don't think you can make a case that Rowling writes better than Heaney.
"Hmmm, need money to pay off my credit cards after Christmas, let's see what else is in daddy's waste paper basket that I can publish..."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Rubbish, a person's name isn't copyright. "Tolkien" may well be a trademark, though. His son or other relatives might have some recourse under libel if it brought their name into disrepute (but in this case they've already agreed), but that's not copyright.
Yes, a translation is copyright. Any issues of rights of the original edition are separate (and obviously in this case the original edition is a few centuries out of copyright). The length of protection starts from the first publication, which presumably is this or next year.
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.
One interesting aspect of Beowulf is the inpenetrable nature of the text for the casual reader, which suddenly becomes clearer when read aloud. After all, the language is related to modern English.
If it were typed pages, and a lot smaller, somebody who'd done a Babelfish translation might try to get away with a BeowulfClusterF..... nevermind.....
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Translated by Alan H. Sommerstein and published under the Penguin Classics imprint.
The book contains Lysistrata, The Acharnians, and The Clouds.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
...is told later, in appendices and in one of the other books, can't recall which one. Parts of LOTR that Tolkien had to drop due to publishing costs post-WWII were later published.
There's a great scene set in Minas Tirith, for example, while everybody's just hanging around, killing time and waiting for Arwen to show up. It's Gandalf and some of the other characters, sitting around a room, with Gandalf making some links between this story and _The Hobbit_.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Or maybe it was enough for him to translate it so it was around as convenient source material for his lectures and the translation was more like working notes? Beowulf itself isn't that long a book, more like 20-50 pages typed than 2000.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
The cadence and rhythm of the words is completely lost when translated. Essentially, simply translating it into english is a pointless exercise.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
As with most "journalism", this should be taken with a shaker of salt. There's a lot of promotional and journalistic bombast.
Tolkien's translation of _Beowulf_ has never been "lost". It was deposited in the Bodleian archives by Christopher Tolkien himself, and has been listed in the Tolkien MS catalogue ever since. I myself saw it during the Tolkien Centenary Conference in 1992, as I am sure have many other readers before and since that time.
The same, by the way, is true of the two versions of the essay, "Beowulf and the Critics", which Michael Drout has recently published. In fact, no manuscript deposited with the Bodleian archives can, without great hyperbole, be described as "lost".
I'll also note that the figure of "2000" manuscript pages is either a typo or the result of great confusion; it is too high by about a factor of 10.
transliteration. Or for that matter merely "translating" into a readable grammer. This is what untalented hacks do. A proper translation will go as far as it can to preserve everything, including idiom.
Poetry is the hardest to translate, but it can be done, particularly in the older metrical non rhyming "saga" type poems.
If any modern author has an inate sense of the importance of, and a fine ability to produce, proper cadanced epic poems, for God's sake man, it's certainly J.R.R.
KFG
Imagine a Tolkien Cluster of those!
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Ode to Tolkien
Of the hobbit-maker much is known. Through piles of papers many scholars peruse The etymology of ents and the origin of orcs. In the lore of Grendle-slayer he is steeped in study. Tolkein sang to us the sound of a hero?s heart? The weaving of wonders, the joys of generations.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Yes, a translation is copyright. Any issues of rights of the original edition are separate (and obviously in this case the original edition is a few centuries out of copyright).
However, particular modern scholarly editions are copyright by the editors who prepare them. This is because for many works, particularly those published from manuscript, the textual editing required to prepare a usable edition generates a copyrightable text. (Take a look at a scholarly edition of the Greek New Testament sometime, you'll be shocked at how many different readings there are of each part of the text.) For scholarly purposes, a translator usually makes use of more than one edition to prepare his translation so that (s)he can consider all the possible readings; this also helps to protect the translator from a test as to how far the copyright of a scholarly edition extends. (When I worked for a journal that published this stuff, we had many cases of publishers trying to push the outside of the envelope in this way, and we tended to cave.)
I understand that the MS of Beowulf is unique, and is quite a mess, requiring a great deal of scholarly intervention.
Tolkien also translated the Middle English Pearl MS texts.
IANAL
Of the hobbit-maker much is known. Through piles of papers many scholars peruse The etymology of ents and the origin of orcs. In the lore of Grendle-slayer he is steeped in study. Tolkien sang to us the sound of a heros heart. The weaving of wonders, the joys of generations
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
(I read hobbit and LOTR before, but not in english)
Oh, the agony. Oh, the pain
I was paying the price for my lack of vision
(Only years later did I find out he was a linguist.)
Working for necessity's mother.
Jeez, messed up the html again. Need more coffee.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
Here is a link to the description of the ballet before it was pulled from the website.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Seamus Heaney's recasting of Beowulf is one of the great original poems of the 20th century. It is in my top five. Highly recommended to those who hate poetry. Absolutely thrilling read.
And you are right, listening would be best. In spite of the degradation of our ability to feel aural experience the way these cultures did, you *can* feel your heart quicken at the right moments in the poem. Keep in mind that for the intended audience, the story was known pat. The bards learnt it off by rote and their art consisted in their *riffs* on the theme.
Heaney has done a masterful job of making this experience real to a modern audience. It is a vital work.
illegitimii non ingravare
I think a great number of people love to see how Tolkien created his masterpiece(s). He managed to keep all his various drafts on paper and wrote down why he made changes etc. No one is forcing you to read them though.
IN SOVIET RUSSIA!
apologies for extending this lame bit...
c-hack.com |
Sounds like child abuse to me.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
It's chronological... the Lost Tales consist of the earliest work written in pencil in the trenches during WW2... by the time you get to the very last C.Tolkien book, you get to the last writing on middle earth including the first (and only) chapter that JRR Tolkien started on a LOTR sequel.