In language.
The translation is followed by a commentary on the poem that became the base for Tolkien's acclaimed 1936 lecture "Ten years later, however, Tolkien drew upon this work when he gave a lecture "Beowulf, a prince of the Geats, and his followers set out to help king Hroðgar of the Danes in his fight against the monster Grendel. But “Beowulf” translators have always taken liberties with the poem—in part because the source text is faulty. What if the standard interpretation is wrong?
"Language is a living thing," she writes in her introduction. No, I don't care if you loved it/hated it, if it traumatized you, if it ruined and/or energized the English language for you, or ruined you for translations or whatever. Many versions also call Grendel’s mother a “sea-wolf,” but the Old English equivalent for this is “brimwylf”—and the manuscript itself reads “brimwyl,” which, Headley points out, could easily be a scribal error for “brimwif,” “sea-woman.” (Not one of six translations by men which I consulted noted this possibility.) He so terrorizes the Spear-Danes that they abandon Heorot after dark, leaving the great hall deserted.After twelve years of this, “News went global.” Across the sea, in Geatland (modern-day Sweden), Beowulf gathers “fourteen fists for hire” and sails for Hrothgar’s kingdom.
Monstrous, yes.
So ought a young man by good deeds deserve, fromum feohgiftum on fæder bearme (and) by fine treasure-gifts, while in his father's keeping, Beowulf, now in his eighties, tries to fight the dragon but cannot succeed. When Beowulf dives into the sea in search of Grendel’s mother, who lives in a kind of underwater castle, does the poet say that he swims for most of the day before reaching the bottom or that he gets there while it is still daylight? But Maria Headley's Which is all as it should be. Maria Dahvana Headley’s revisionist translation infuses the Old English poem with feminism and social-media slang. They range from scholars like Tolkien (who spent decades revising his translation before deciding not to publish it; it appeared posthumously in a There is one notable exception. Translated throughout the late 1990s, it was published in 1999 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux and won that year's Whitbread Book of the Year Award. Headley writes that, as a child “on the hunt for any sort of woman warrior,” she came upon this character in an illustrated encyclopedia of monsters and assumed, naturally, that Grendel’s mother was the focus of the story. Maria Dahvana Headley’s revisionist translation infuses the Old English poem with feminism and social-media slang.Afew weeks ago, during a visit to the doctor, I laughed out loud when the online check-in portal suggested Old English as my language preference, and not only because I happened to have with me Maria Dahvana Headley’s “Even without understanding the meaning (roughly, “We of the Spear-Danes in the days of yore”), we can notice a few things about Old English poetry. Tell me we still know how to talk about kings! It is bragging. It is dedicated in memory of poet and translator Ted Hughes. Swá sceal geong guma góde gewyrcean: 20. Der Nowell Codex enthält daneben noch vier weitere altenglische Prosa- und Verstexte, unter anderem da… (For comparison, Heaney: “A fair witness can see how well each one behaved.”)But we get ahead of ourselves. They may be “only stories now.” Nevertheless, they are stories in which readers—perhaps especially those who come from outside the mainstream of those texts’ traditions and approach them without preconceptions—can continue to find meaning. . from one min-strel to another. Scyld's heir, in Northern lands.
As Headley notes, the Old English word “fingrum” is often translated as “claws,” but Grendel’s mother uses a knife during her fight with Beowulf, and “wielding a knife while also possessing long nails is—as anyone who’s ever had a manicure knows—a near impossibility.” The character is called “aglaec-wif,” which others have translated as “wretch,” “ogress,” “hell-bride,” and even “ugly troll lady.” But Headley asserts that it is a female equivalent of the noun “aglaeca,” which means awe-inspiring. Okay, sit still.
The Heyne-Socin text and glossary have been closely followed. It can feast, unfulfilled, forever.” Or when the narrator foreshadows the destruction of Heorot:“Beowulf” scholars may stop us here. Each line is broken up into two half lines, separated by a caesura; the focus is on metre and alliteration, not rhyme. After some 50 years, a dragon whose treasure had been stolen from his hoard in a burial mound begins to terrorize Geatland. Beowulf (modern English translation) By Anonymous Translated by Frances B. Grummere LO, praise of the prowess of people-kings ... Famed was this Beowulf: far flew the boast of him, son of Scyld, in the Scandian lands. It is brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating, with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand—Grendel is “fucked by fate,” Wealhtheow, “hashtag: blessed.” Not everyone will admire all the linguistic and stylistic choices she has made; that crunching noise in the background is the sound of her predecessors rolling in their burial ships. When Headley finally read the poem, she was dismayed that scholars had treated the character as a marginal figure, an extension of her child, or as only partially human.Dedicated to “Anonymous and all the stories she told,” “The Mere Wife” includes some tantalizing snippets of “Beowulf” as translated by Headley. Because Grendel hates music and noise he frequently attacks Hroðgar's mead hall Beowulf returns home to become king of the Geats.