New YouTuber Gavin the Medievalist breaks down what he found in Tolkien’s translation and commentary of the Old English epic Beowulf and whether you should be reading it in 2025.
New YouTuber Gavin the Medievalist breaks down what he found in Tolkien’s translation and commentary of the Old English epic Beowulf and whether you should be reading it in 2025.
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I have not tried this video, yet – but I did enjoy reading – and have since enjoyed ‘working with’ – the Tolkien volume! Of course, it is often tantalizing in its incompletenesses, not least when Christopher stops and leaves out all the detailed stuff I was eagerly looking forward to reading in Tolkien’s evaluation of Cynewulf.
My delightful high school English teacher astonishingly gave me his set of LPs of Kemp Malone reading the whole poem in Old English, after we had read a translation in class – I think there are a couple other complete Old English readings ‘out there’ online, but am sadly no longer sure where I ran into references to them (!). We also have a copy of the handy 1977 Howell D. Chickering Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition with text and his translation on facing pages.
I pretty much concur with everything Gavin says, and I have a review to that effect around here somewhere. When I took upon myself the hubristic task of rendering the Lament from Beowulf for “The Baldur Game,” I cribbed heavily from Tolkien (and other translations, but I found Tolkien especially useful). Not being able to read Anglo-Saxon, but having some knowledge of Germanic languages, I figured I could muddle something out. I regret nothing.