Beowulf Dual Language Edition

Presents a new translation of the Anglo-Saxon epic chronicling the heroic adventures of Beowulf, the Scandinavian warrior who saves his people from the ravages of the monster Grendel and Grendel's mother.

This presentation of the translation and the Old English Text on facing pages allows the reader to approach the first major poem in English literature in a fresh and exciting new way. Includes a Guide to Reading Aloud, Introduction, Commentary and notes for translation from the original.

It may be the oldest surviving long poem in Old English and is commonly cited as one of the most important works of Old English literature. A date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating pertains to the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. The author was an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet, referred to by scholars as the "Beowulf poet". The poem is set in Scandinavia. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his memory. The full poem survives in the manuscript known as the Nowell Codex, located in the British Library. It has no title in the original manuscript, but has become known by the name of the story's protagonist. In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through Ashburnham House in London that had a collection of medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton.

This dual-language edition of Beowulf is for the general readers’ enjoyment of the poem as well as a study guide for students of English language and literature. To meet this dual purpose, the book provides the two texts running in parallel. The general readers can enjoy the poem by reading the translation; but the serious students of English can lean on the translation as a prop while studying the original text line after line. For the students of Old English, who wish to attain a thorough understanding of the original lines, the Textual and Explanatory Notes will be an indispensable apparatus: these notes discuss diverse scholarly interpretations on the problematic phrases and lines before the translator offers his own opinion.

New York Times bestseller and winner of the Whitbread Award. Composed toward the end of the first millennium, 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 beginning of the twenty-first century, Nobel laureate 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.

A New York Times Bestseller. 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 aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface.

This carefully crafted ebook: “Beowulf: complete bilingual edition including the original anglo-saxon edition + 3 modern english translations + an extensive study of the poem + footnotes, index and alphabetical glossary” contains 5 books in one volume and is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Beowulf is the conventional title of an Old English heroic epic poem consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines, set in Scandinavia, commonly cited as one of the most important works of Anglo-Saxon literature. It survives in a single manuscript known as the Nowell Codex. Its composition by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet is dated between the 8th and the early 11th century. In 1731, the manuscript was badly damaged by a fire that swept through a building housing a collection of Medieval manuscripts assembled by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The poem's existence for its first seven centuries or so made no impression on writers and scholars, and besides a brief mention in a 1705 catalogue by Humfrey Wanley it was not studied until the end of the eighteenth century, and not published in its entirety until the 1815 edition prepared by the Icelandic-Danish scholar Grímur Jónsson Thorkelin. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the help of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (in Heorot) has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland. The numerous different translations and interpretations of Beowulf turn this monumental work into a challenge for the reader. This ebook contains 5 books in one ebook: 1) By Anonymous, edited by Alfred John Wyatt: "Beowulf". This is the anglo-saxon original version based on the autotypes (facsimilies) in Julius Zupitza’s edition of 1882. 2) By John Lesslie Hall: "Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem". This is a 1892 translation of Beowulf into modern english with notes and comments. 3) By William Morris: "The Tale of Beowulf - Sometime King of the Folk of the Weder Geats". This is an 1895 translation of Beowulf into modern english with notes and comments. 4) By: Francis Barton Gummere: "Beowulf". This is a 1910 translation of Beowulf into modern english , with notes and comments. 5) By: Raymond Wilson Chambers: "Beowulf - An Introduction to the Study of the Poem with a Discussion of the Stories of Offa and Finn".