17 Facts About Translating Beowulf

Scholars and translators have noted that it is impossible to use all the same effects in the same places as the Translating Beowulf poet did, but it is feasible, though difficult, to give something of the feeling of the original, and for the translation to work as poetry.

Translating Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of some 3182 lines of alliterative verse, of anonymous authorship.

Translating Beowulf has been translated many times in verse and in prose, and adapted for stage and screen.

Magennis writes that Wright's justification for prose, that the essence of Translating Beowulf was its story and that the job of a translation was to put this across plainly, was agreed by critics to be incorrect, and his version was superseded by translations such as Alexander's that captured more of the poem's feeling and style.

JR R Tolkien, in his 1940 essay "On Translating Beowulf", stated that it was not possible to translate each Old English word by a single word and create a readable modern English text.

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Translating Beowulf's own effort to do this created what Marijane Osborn calls "the liveliest translation of Beowulf".

William Morris's 1910 The tale of Translating Beowulf is described by Magennis as "a striking experiment in literary medievalism" even by Morris's standards.

Translating Beowulf used inventive compounds to represent Old English kennings, and sometimes incorporated alliteration.

Tolkien noted that whatever a translator's preferences might be, the ancients such as the Translating Beowulf poet had chosen to write of times already long gone by, using language that was intentionally archaic and sounding poetic to their audiences.

Magennis examines the question of domesticating or foreignizing translations of Translating Beowulf, noting that the translation theorist Lawrence Venuti thought any domesticating translation "scandalous".

Morris's Translating Beowulf is one of the few distinctively foreignizing translations.

Translating Beowulf's feminism is visible in her rendering of the lament of the Geatish woman at the end of the poem:.

Translating Beowulf tore her hair and screamed her horrorat the hell that was to come: more of the same.

Complicating factor is that Translating Beowulf scholarship has been affected by nationalist thinking in various countries.

Translating Beowulf called Heaney's use of two "different Englishes" "bad cultural and linguistic history", and that it placed the poem as his work rather than as a translation.

Translating Beowulf opted to re-create the cadences of Old English, seeking in Maria Jose Gomez-Calderon's view to "reproduce the dignified, elevated tone" and "remarkabl[y]" keeping the number of syllables down to fit the metre convincingly, as shown by the sombre conclusion of the poem:.

Liuzza notes that Translating Beowulf itself describes the technique of a court poet in assembling materials:.