A readable Beowulf the old English Epic Newly Translated

"""An opposition of ends and beginnings ... an elaboration of the ancient and intensely moving contrast between youth age, first achievement and final death."" Legatee of the historical adventures of continental ancestors of the Anglo-Saxons, the folklore of Norse mythology, and a system of oral-formulaic composition as old as human community, Beowulf is unquestionably the earliest masterpiece of English secular poetry. Stanley B. Greenfield, one of the world's foremost Anglo-Saxon scholars, writes of why, after more than thirty years of study, he undertook the Herculean task of rendering Beowulf into contemporary verse: ""I wanted my translation to be not only faithful to the original but, as the late John Lennon would have put it, 'A Poem in its Own Write.' I wanted it to 'flow', to be easy to read, with the narrative movement of a modern prose story: yet to suggest the rhythmic cadences of the Old English poem. I wanted it both modern and Old English in its reflexes and sensibilities, delighting both the general reader and the Anglo-Saxon specialist ....I wanted it to reproduce the intoxication of aural contours which... might have pleased and amused warriors over their cups in the Anglo-Saxon mead-hall, or those monks in Anglo-Saxon monasteries who paid more attention to song and to stories of Ingeld than to the lector and gospels. Greenfield has fulfilled these noble aims to a remarkable degree. Daniel G. Calder in his prepublication review of the translation wrote, ""I find it the best translation of Beowulf... One of the great problems with other translations is that they make the reading of Beowulf difficult. Greenfield's translation speeds along with considerable ease Scholars will find the translation fascinating as an exercise in the successful recreating of various aspects of Old English poetic style."" STANLEY B. GREENFIELD is a professor of English, University of Oregon. Among the translator's numerous publications are A Critical History of Old English Literature (1965), The Interpretation of Old English Poems (1972), and, with Fred C. Robinson, A Bibliography of Publications on Old English Literature to the end of 1972 (1980). Alain Renoir is a professor of English University of California, Berkeley. He has published widely on Old English and other medieval literatures and is an authority on oral-formulaic theory and the critical application of it to those literatures."