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Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary Paperback – August 4, 2015

by J.R.R. Tolkien (Author), Christopher Tolkien (Editor)

105 customer reviews

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New York Times bestseller

“A thrill . . . Beowulf was Tolkien’s lodestar. Everything he did led up to or away from it.” —New Yorker

J.R.R. Tolkien completed his translation of Beowulf in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition includes an illuminating written commentary on the poem by the translator himself, drawn from a series of lectures he gave at Oxford in the 1930s.

His creative attention to detail in these lectures gives rise to a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if Tolkien entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beach their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to Beowulf’s rising anger at Unferth’s taunting, or looking up in amazement at Grendel’s terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot.

“Essential for students of the Old English poem—and the ideal gift for devotees of the One Ring.” —Kirkus

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

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Product Details

Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: Mariner Books; 1 edition (August 4, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0544570308
ISBN-13: 978-0544570306
Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 1.2 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (105 customer reviews)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,300 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Themes & Styles > Epic
- #120 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Mythology & Folk Tales
- #589 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Epic

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Customer Reviews

105

4.4 out of 5 stars

5 star		69%
4 star		17%
3 star		6%
2 star		4%
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

114 of 118 people found the following review helpful

Perfect to lose yourself in

By Graham Tedesco-Blair on May 22, 2014

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

Tolkien's translation of Beowulf dropped today, and goodness gracious is it a beautiful thing. Not only the poetic-prose translation itself (in prose form, but with an ear to how long sentences are and to alliteration), but copious footnotes by Christopher Tolkien about the translation and its composition from the existent manuscripts that JRR had left behind; a couple hundred pages of lecture excepts from JRR's famous lecture series on the poem that are just gorgeous in detail and scope; The Sellic Spell, a piece of Beowulf fan-fiction that JRR wrote about the early adventures of Beowulf/attempt to reconstruct the original tale from which Beowulf is a later version of; and The Lay of Beowulf, a shorter version of the story in verse for singing your children to sleep.

This is the good stuff. I'm already enjoying it as much as Seamus Heaney's verse translation (read alongside, not instead of: Heaney is more raw and emotional, Tolkien more beautifully complex, both are worth your time), and the commentary is amazing. My only beef is that it doesn't include The Monsters and the Critics, Tolkien's famous lecture about the poem's critics and its place in history, but as its quite long and is easily available both online and in a separate volume, I can over look it.

I read something like this, and I wish all writers could be so well served by their heirs. Brian Herbert, I'm looking in your direction...

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62 of 64 people found the following review helpful

read for right reasons, thoroughly enjoyable and informative. Liked the comments as much if not more than the prose translation

By B. Capossere TOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on May 25, 2014

Format: Kindle Edition

The last few years has seen the release by the Tolkien Estate of several hybrid books that combined original retellings/translations of ancient hero legends (Sigurd, Arthur) with further commentary by J.R.R. Tolkien (on the source material) and Christopher Tolkien (on his father’s work). The latest in this series is Tolkien’s translation of Beowulf, which has perhaps incurred greater interest since outside of his fiction, Tolkien is perhaps best known for his famed essay, “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” As with the prior two, one’s enjoyment of this new work will be dependent on one’s delight in /toleration of some pretty arcane scholarship. Personally, I enjoyed all of them, including this latest, but then, I’m a huge Tolkien fan, I’m an English teacher who owns several copies of Beowulf translations and teaches the legend every year, I love the song “Grendel” by Marillion and the book Grendel by John Gardiner, and give me a good footnote or twenty and I’m alight with joy. I couldn’t be more the target audience unless I threw myself into a dragon-prowed boat and laid waste to some English coastal towns. Your mileage therefore may vary.

The book contains an introduction by Christopher (from now on I will use Tolkien to refer to the father and Christopher to the son), Tolkien’s prose translation of Beowulf, “Notes on the text of the translation” (both Tolkien’s and Christopher’s), “Introductory note to the Commentary” (Christopher’s explanation of his editing of this father’s comments), “Commentary Accompanying the Translation of Beowulf” (drawn from Tolkien’s lecture notes), “Sellic Spell” (three versions of Tolkien’s attempt at telling what might have been the old source folktale for the legend as we have it), and “The Lay of Beowulf” (two short poems/songs by Tolkien).Read more ›

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41 of 42 people found the following review helpful

Tolkien As Academic Gives Us A New Treasure

By John D. Cofield TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE VOICE on May 23, 2014

Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase

Had J.R.R. Tolkien never written The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or The Silmarillion his fame today would rest on his long career at Oxford University as professor of Anglo-Saxon. There he did pioneering work in philology, but his greatest renown would come from his life long labor of love: studying the great poem Beowulf. Much of Tolkien's work on Beowulf, especially his revolutionary essay "The Monsters and the Critics," has been widely available for many years. Now Christopher Tolkien, serving as his father's literary executor, has give us another treasure: J.R.R. Tolkien's own prose translation of Beowulf.

Christopher Tolkien states in his Preface that the translation was completed by 1926, when his father was 34 and still in the early years of his career. Over the next twenty years Tolkien continued to study and reflect on Beowulf, writing essays and giving lectures and classes. In preparing Tolkien's translation for publication his son had to choose between several different manuscripts and then deal with the truly arduous task of selecting from a vast body of work those notes and commentaries which would be most illuminating. The result is an amazing almost line by line analysis of the translation. As yet I've only had time to dip in here and there, but wherever I've looked I've found some fascinating insights and new information, such as that "Hwaet", the famous first word of Beowulf which Tolkien translated as "Lo!" is an anacrusis or "striking up" that derived from minstrels, or that Beowulf's "ice-bears" could not have been polar bears since that species was not known in Europe until much later.Read more ›

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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

Tolkien's Beloved Beowulf

By Joel E. Mitchell on May 27, 2014

Format: Hardcover

There is such a variety of Beowulf-related material in here that I decided to break it down by section.

The verse translation: Tolkien made an unfinished/fragmentary alliterative verse translation of "Beowulf", but you will not find it in this book other than a dozen lines on page 9 and seven more on page 130. Given that Christopher Tolkien has published other partial/fragmentary verse by his father (e.g. The Fall of Arthur and The Lays of Beleriand (The History of Middle-Earth, Vol. 3)), I find this omission both surprising and very disappointing.

Preface & Introduction: These sections are fairly typical of Christopher Tolkien's work, featuring him describing/justifying his editorial process. Personally, I find his tendency to do this to be annoying, but maybe that is just me.

Prose Translation: In prose translations of poetry, a degree of artistry is usually sacrificed for the sake of a more formal (i.e. word-for-word) translation. Tolkien's skill as a wordsmith keeps this loss of artistry to a minimum. His prose rendering does lose the original poem's alliteration, but it still flows with a pleasing rhythm that gives much the same feeling as the original.

Notes on the text of the translation: In this section, Christopher Tolkien is back to pontificating about his editorial process and giving a number of readings from one of the early (i.e. rough draft) versions of the poem. Pretty much anything important in this section is repeated with greater skill in the commentary section.Read more ›

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

... I am the only one on here that didn't like it. There are quite a...

I received Tolkien's translation of Beowulf as a gift recently and I think I am the only one on here that didn't like it. Read more

Published 14 days ago by Steve C.

the background information and additional stories will satisfy and...

A grand effort by the Old King himself . If you are a fan of Beowulf , the background information and additional stories will satisfy and give you more of the view of the old... Read more

Published 16 days ago by John Dominguez

You must own this if you are interested in fantasy or history or TLOTR

A very technical work, more suited to someone who has studied Old English, but still accessibly written and enjoyable. Filled with surprises. Definitely worth buying.

Published 26 days ago by Philip J. Herman

Five Stars

Written in 1924 published in 2014, I have been waiting for this verse translation for 30 years.

Published 1 month ago by Lisa H

Nicely done

Loved this for my 14 year old

Published 1 month ago by Collette Dodson

Five Stars

Beowulf is a great classic story. And Tolkien's translation adds an extra layer of depth.

Published 2 months ago by C.A.N.

A good read.

A lovely translation, but then I've always been a fan of tolkien's translations. A good read.

Published 2 months ago by Greg Dickinson

Tolkien at his best!

This is an excellent piece of work! I'm still reading it and savoring every minute. Worthwhile for the novice or the expert in reading ancient sagas.

Published 2 months ago by froggy

Surprisingly fun

A very interesting read. I had heard of, but not read, Beowolf; somewhere or other I got the idea that it was something one reads in school, and then happily forgets. Read more

Published 2 months ago by Ed

Tolkien is always worth it.

It's Tolkien. What's not to like. Not sure it's quite up to Heaney's gorgeous translation, but Tolkien is a master.

Published 3 months ago by murphette

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