Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... Beowulfby Beowulf Poet
» 65 more Best Fantasy Novels (306) Sonlight Books (72) Five star books (68) Ambleside Books (77) Books Read in 2021 (127) Art of Reading (3) Top Five Books of 2020 (315) Books Read in 2015 (423) A Reading List (5) Overdue Podcast (51) 100 World Classics (46) Readable Classics (69) Books Read in 2020 (839) Western Canon (9) United Kingdom (21) Books Read in 2022 (2,174) Out of Copyright (90) Fate vs. Free Will (11) Read in 2016 (2) Books Read in 2006 (90) Western Canon (7) Used books to buy next (476) Poetry Corner (153) Unread books (973) Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.
I had read only a section of this epic poem about 50 years ago, when I was young and did not really grasp its significance. I chose the audio version for this "read" for a reason: Given that is believed to have been composed in the 8th century about events in the 6th century (though uncertain and surely before the beginning of the 11th century, as I learned the Beowulf manuscript is dated around 1000 A.D., and the poem was not printed until the early 19th century), it is a tale that likely would was told orally over and over before it was written down, in the tradition of the bards of those eras. It's a class good vs. evil saga involving a hero's quest and many of the other elements of a heroic tale: war, pride, courage, hubris. An astounding poem presenting perfectly England's northern german and nordic heritage. It is a truly epic tale that captures both history and the imagination. Its themes and ideas echo throughout the rest of English literature and fantasy. It is a story that speaks from our bones and I'm glad it now sings through mine. I read this as part of a three-night read-aloud activity at a cabin-camping event. Friday night, we read and heard the tale of Beowulf vs. Grendel (Spoiler Alert (SA): Countless sleeping spearmen and Grendal die). The reading lasted about an hour and a half. Saturday night we read and heard the tale of Beowulf vs. Grendel's mother (SA: Grendel's mother dies). That reading lasted about an hour. Sunday night concluded the poetry reading with the fight between Beowulf and the Dragon. (SA - Beowulf and the dragon both die). It also took about an hour. During the height of the key battle scene, roars from the far end of the hall (gamers celebrating good fortune) added to, rather than detracted from, the drama of the scene. The group reading experience was pure delight. Translation Notes: The original tale would have been told aloud in a manner that spoke to the Saxons in their own story-telling tradition. It would feel modern to the original audience, but feels more ancient and rather foreign to an audience of the 21st century, speaking a different language. Most translations, like Burton Raffel's (the version I first read and still love) try to stay true to the style of language and word choice in the single surviving copy of the poem. So the translation feels wondrous, archaic, and a bit foreign. This translator aimed their work for a different feel. This translator wanted the audience to understand and feel an immediacy, in a very contemporarily modern use of language that brings the reader into the story. It is as if someone in their circle of friends was passing on what just happened, not some musty old-fashioned geek using arcane ways of speaking to convey what some other ancient geezers had said and done. Thus, the famous first word of the original, "Hwæt!", traditionally rendered variously as "Listen!" or "What!" or "Lo!" , in this translation is "Bro!" Results: 1-Conversations sparked by this adventure tended to include the observation that "The original author kept throwing in digressions. He couldn't seem to tell the story without interrupting himself with a tangential story." 2- I reveal myself as a bit of a musty old-fashioned geek here, because this very modern retelling was more au courant in language usage than I am. If the slang had echoed the 1970s or 80s, I'd have understood immediately. But young people these days have their own way of talking.... Conclusion: This was an absolutely amazing way to read a book jointly with a dozen other people, as both reader and listener. It provoked fascinating conversations and provided insights into an impromptu storytelling tale. At only three and a half hours, this was also way shorter than the modern current-events-audio book I'm in the midst of.
At the beginning of the new millennium, one of the surprise successes of the publishing season is a 1,000-year-old masterpiece. The book is ''Beowulf,'' Seamus Heaney's modern English translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic, which was created sometime between the 7th and the 10th centuries. Translation is not mainly the work of preserving the hearth -- a necessary task performed by scholarship -- but of letting a fire burn in it. Belongs to Publisher Series — 14 more Is contained inThe Harvard Classics [50 Volume Set] by Charles William Eliot (indirect) Is retold inHas the adaptationIs abridged inInspiredHas as a reference guide/companionHas as a studyHas as a commentary on the textHas as a concordanceHas as a student's study guideHas as a teacher's guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Composed toward the end of the first millennium of our era, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the end of the twentieth century, Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in Beowulf and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader. No library descriptions found. |
Current DiscussionsBeowulf LE coming 27 June 2023 in Folio Society Devotees Popular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)829.3Literature English & Old English literatures Old English literature, ca. 450-1100 BeowulfLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
( )