Beowulf: Old English Edition (Penguin English Poets) [Paperback]

Anonymous (Author), Michael Alexander (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Penguin English Poets | Publication Date: November 1, 1995

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland. Through its blend of myth and history, Beowulf vividly evokes a twilight world in which men and supernatural forces live side by side, and celebrates the endurance of the human spirit in a transient world.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English

About the Author

This heroic Anglo-Saxon narrative poem, believed to have been written 1,250 years ago, is rich in history and legend. Michael Alexander edits this latest edition to great acclaim.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (November 1, 1995)
• Language: Old English
• ISBN-10: 0140433775
• ISBN-13: 978-0140433777
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,137,898 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ian Myles Slater on: The Text Edition, Not the Audio, December 28, 2004

By 

Ian M. Slater "aylchanan" (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beowulf: Old English Edition (Penguin English Poets) (Paperback)

Amazon has linked, as equivalent editions, and for reviews, two entirely distinct products. One is a recording of David Rintoul reading a translation of "Beowulf" into modern English -- presumably Michael Alexander's "Beowulf: A Verse Translation" in the Penguin Classics series. It has been linked to a separate volume in the Penguin Classics series, Michael Alexander's *edition* of the Old English (Anglo-Saxon) *text* of the early medieval poem. (I won't be more specific; pick a date after about 750 and before about 1020, you'll find a backer.)

Since Old English is a language about as different from Modern English as the latter is from, say, German, you are going to have to be careful to figure out exactly which item the reviewers are talking about -- if they get that specific. Detailed appreciations of "Beowulf" do not constitute, to my mind, a review of any particular edition, translation, or recorded reading. (Even when I agree with them; a great poem.)

Michael Alexander's text edition offers something unusual, in both the Penguin Classics series and among "Beowulf editions." It is conservatively edited -- that is, it uses consensus readings from recent critical and student editions, with no original departures in the way of conjectural emendations, etc. But instead of either a dictionary-style glossary OR a facing translation, he offers word by word glosses to each line on the page facing the Old English text. The words there are not given in the inflected or conjugated forms in which they appear in the text, but as a dictionary-style head-words. For example, in line 1590, the word "becearf" is identified by the infinitive, "beceorfan," meaning "cut off."

This is actually quite convenient for a student working with a basic textbook, more so than a conventional glossary or dictionary; instead of remembering sound-laws to find the base form, *before* looking it up, you can check your recollection against a grammatical table, or, for the some of the odder "strong" verbs, look it up to identify the type, and then work out the details. (If you haven't studied Old English, or German, trust me; that would mean a lot to you.) Additionally, for fairly long stretches, it is possible to make out a good deal of sense with just the raw vocabulary -- although hardly enough to get a real sense of the poem.

For some passages, Alexander offers footnoted translations of sentences; usually giving his solution to recognized difficulties, where the syntax is exceptionally tangled, or the train of thought depends on ideas obscure to modern readers. Although the main text does not offer information on how Alexander arrived at his readings, or suggest alternatives, there is an eleven-page list of "Manuscript Readings' indicating where unintelligible, broken, or missing words have been emended or supplemented.

This is not a substitute for a fuller introductory edition, like George Jack's "Beowulf: A Student Edition" (1994; one of Alexander's sources, with similar glosses, in this case supplementing a formal glossary). And it certainly doesn't compare to Robinson and Mitchell's more comprehensive "Beowulf: An Edition With Relevant Shorter Texts" (1998), the successive revisions of Wrenn's text by Michael Bolton (fifth edition, 1997 ) or Friedrich Klaeber's venerable but invaluable "Beowulf: and The Fight at Finnsburg" (third edition, 1936; with supplements 1941, 1950). But it is not intended to be.

In conjunction with a good textbook on the language, it would make a fine entry into the poem, in place of the very limited excerpts from the 3182-line poem usually given in a "Grammar and Reader."

And for those who have studied the poem in the original, it is a pleasant, and easily-handled refresher, without the constant presence of an "authoritative" voice, as in the bilingual editions of Seamus Heaney's celebrated recent translation (itself rather too literary for this purpose, actually), or Chickering's older "Beowulf: A Dual Language Edition."

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A study of the language, December 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Beowulf: Old English Edition (Penguin English Poets) (Paperback)

This is an excellent book for those who wish to study the original language, and Anglo-Saxon verse. The editor does not include a lot of distracting material, nor are there deep discussions of the theological, allegorical, sociological, etc etc, implications of the poem.

Instead, what you have is a book which has the original text on the left pages, and glosses on right pages. Not 100% of the words are glossed, such as "and". The glosses are all standardized as nom. singular nouns and inf. verbs. This means that the reader should know, or perhaps will learn from reading, the grammar of the language.

A lot of people seem to know about Beowulf, but have no clue what it is. A lot people also consider Old English to be some quaint "high mode" of english, spoken by Knights in Shining Armor.

Some are "forced" to study the poem, in school. And there are those who want to study the poem, for whateve reason.

This book should be useful to all who are interested, or need to be interested.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and clear reading of the oldest epic in English, September 23, 1998

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beowulf (Classic, Audio) (Audio Cassette)

I am a teacher of English, and I've found this tape invaluable for helping students appreciate and understand Beowulf. David Rintoul, the narrator, has a beautiful and clear voice, and makes the epic come to life for modern readers.