Stanley B. Greenfield,Alain Renoir
Stanley B. Greenfield, one of the worldâ€™s foremost Anglo-Saxon scholars, writes of why, after more than thirty years of study, he undertook the Herculean task of rendering ,Beowulf ,into conÂ­temporary verse: â€œI wanted my translation to be not only faithÂ­ful to the original but, as the late John Lennon would have put it, â€˜A Poem in Its Own Write.â€™ I wanted it to â€˜flow,â€™ to be easy to read, with the narrative movement of a modern prose story; yet to suggest the rhythmic cadences of the Old English poem. I wanted it both modern and Old English in its reflexes and senÂ­sibilities, delighting both the general reader and the Anglo-Saxon specialist. . . . I wanted it to reproduce the intoxication of aural contours whichâ€¦ might have pleased and amused warÂ­riors over their cups in the Anglo-Saxon mead-hall, or those monks in Anglo-Saxon monasteries who paid more attention to song and to stories of Ingeld than to the ,lector ,and the gospels.â€,Â ,Greenfield has succeeded to a remarkable degree in reaching his goals. An early reviewer of the manuscript, Daniel G. Calder of UCLA, wrote: â€œI find it the best translation of ,Beowulf.,One of the great problems with other translations is that they make the reading of ,Beowulf ,difficult. Greenfieldâ€™s translation speeds along with considerable ease. . . Scholars will find the translation fascinating as an exercise in the successful recreatÂ­ing of various aspects of Old English poetic style.â€
Literature,Epic
A Readable Beowulf: The Old English Epic Newly Translated