Beowulf: A Verse Translation Into Modern English, (Paperback)

from millsge

I don't know how to review a masterpiece like Beowulf - it's like writing a review of Sistine Chapel . To say something about this work of art that would be both original and add to our understanding of the poem, the author, the time in which it was written, and its many themes is beyond me. As w...

from greeniezona

Okay, I had absolutely no prior experience with the Beowulf story somehow before this book. I knew there was a monster? That the original was Old English and it took place in the North? That was really somehow it. I'd always intended to read the Seamus Heaney translation someday, but when I heard...

from thornton37814

Irish author Seamus Heaney provides a readable poetic translation of the epic Beowulf. In the poem readers see a mingling of Christian and pagan traditions. Well-versed Biblical students may even notice parallels between Beowulf and warriors in the Bible. Although the Old English appears on facin...

from LisaMaria_C

This was a surprisingly speedy, easy and enjoyable read--for which Heaney, the translator, deserves a lot of credit. Especially given this is a verse translation. I've found that I have preferred prose translations of Homer and Dante because those trying to be true to alliteration, meter and rhym...

from jonbrammer

In his preface, Seamus Heaney refers to the critical tradition of treating Beowulf less as a work of literature and more as a catalog of anthropological, historical and ethnic information. As the first long piece of Old English epic poetry, it carries with it a lot of intrinsic value as an histor...