Introduction -- About this translation -- About the text -- A note on pronunciation -- Map: the geography of Beowulf -- Beowulf -- Appendix: Genealogical tables -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments A widely celebrated translator’s vivid,...
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Introduction -- About this translation -- About the text -- A note on pronunciation -- Map: the geography of Beowulf -- Beowulf -- Appendix: Genealogical tables -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Acknowledgments A widely celebrated translator’s vivid, accessible, and elegantly concise rendering of an ancient English masterpiece. Beowulf tells the story of a Scandinavian hero who defeats three evil creatures—a huge, cannibalistic ogre named Grendel, Grendel’s monstrous mother, and a dragon—and then dies, mortally wounded during his last encounter. If the definition of a superhero is “someone who uses his special powers to fight evil,” then Beowulf is our first English superhero story, and arguably our best. It is also a deeply pious poem, so bold in its reverence for a virtuous pagan past that it teeters on the edge of heresy. From beginning to end, we feel we are in the hands of a master storyteller. Stephen Mitchell’s marvelously clear and vivid rendering re-creates the robust masculine music of the original. It both hews closely to the meaning of the Old English and captures its wild energy and vitality, not just as a deep “work of literature” but also as a rousing entertainment that can still stir our feelings and rivet our attention today, after more than a thousand years. This new translation—spare, sinuous, vigorous in its narration, and translucent in its poetry—makes a masterpiece accessible to everyone.
