{"product_id":"beowulf-isbn-9781400096220","title":"Beowulf","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe first major poem in English literature • Translated by Howell D. Chickering with the Old English on facing pages\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e tells the story of the life and death of the legendary hero Beowulf in his three great battles with supernatural monsters. The ideal Anglo-Saxon warrior-aristocrat, Beowulf is an example of the heroic spirit at its finest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLeading \u003ci\u003eBeowulf \u003c\/i\u003escholar Howell D. Chickering’s fresh and lively translation, featuring the Old English on facing pages, allows the reader to encounter \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e as poetry. This edition incorporates recent scholarship and provides historical and literary context for the modern reader. It includes the following:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e• \u003c\/b\u003ean introduction\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e• \u003c\/b\u003ea guide to reading aloud\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e• \u003c\/b\u003ea chart of royal genealogies\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e• \u003c\/b\u003enotes on the background of the poem\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e• \u003c\/b\u003ecritical commentary\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e• \u003c\/b\u003eglosses on the eight most famous passages, for the student who wishes to translate from the original\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e• \u003c\/b\u003ean extensive bibliography“It is everywhere vigorous.... Chickering enjoys the poem immensely, and this attractive attitude shines everywhere.... This book is valuable for its extended literary appreciations and its facing text.” —\u003ci\u003eLibrary Journal\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A fine book.... The essays on poetics, social history, and structure and the notes to specific passages survey the important scholarship.” —\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eHOWELL D. CHICKERING is the G. Armour Craig Professor of Language and Literature, Emeritus at Amherst College. His critical essays, chiefly on medieval English poetry, have appeared in such journals as \u003ci\u003eThe Chaucer Review, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Kenyon Review, Philological Quarterly, PMLA, Speculum,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eViator.\u003c\/i\u003eI am very gratified that over the years this book has found a wide   and varied audience, from high school students to Ph.D. candidates as   well as the general reader interested in poetry. I believe that its   longevity is due to my putting the original Old English poem on   display in a fairly comprehensible fashion, even though there are   places where I would now refine my facing translation or expand the   commentary.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Increasingly in the last decade colleagues who regularly use this   book have asked me if I would ever consider updating it. I have   brooded over what an \"update\" could possibly mean for a book that is   already selective and is aimed at making \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e available as poetry   to those who have not studied Old English before. Certainly it cannot   mean a full account, nor even a cursory survey, of the many   developments in the study of the poem over the last quarter century.   At the same time, some of those developments do bear upon the   literary interpretation of the poem. Moreover, new research tools   have come into being, the ongoing \u003ci\u003eDictionary of Old English (DOE)\u003c\/i\u003e   chief among them, that give us a more accurate understanding of words   and concepts in Old English. Recent editions and reexaminations of   the MS. have led me to change my mind about the best way to render   particular lines. In addition, a number of difficult passages remain   in dispute.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe first section below is a digest of what I regard as the most   important work on topics that affect my interpretation and   translation of the poem. This section is highly selective and has no   pretensions to complete coverage. All the different areas of Beowulf   study, past and present, are already thoroughly discussed in the now   indispensable \u003ci\u003eA Beowulf Handbook\u003c\/i\u003e, eds. Bjork and Niles (to 1994), and   Andy Orchard's A Critical Companion to \"Beowulf\" (to 2002), both of   which contain exhaustive bibliographies. For an annotated   bibliography from 1979 to 1990, see Hasenfratz, Beowulf Scholarship.   For reviews of research published since 2002, see the Beowulf section   of \"The Year's Work in Old English Studies\" appearing annually in the   Old English Newsletter (OEN).  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the second section below I briefly discuss the choices that   editors must make in punctuating and emending the sole surviving MS.   of the poem, and then list the specific points in the original text   where I would now choose a different reading or where I regard the   meaning as still uncertain. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All new references in this Afterword, cited here by author or short   title, are listed in full in Section IV of the Bibliography. The DOE   and OEN appear under Healey and Liuzza, respectively.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I.  Scholars still \"do not know by whom, how, when, or where \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e was   composed\" (p. 247 above), but the range of suggested possibilities   has expanded, and scholarship on the subject has flourished mightily.   The articles in the 1981 Colin Chase volume (p. 410 below) made many   scholars consider the possibility of dating the poem to the Danish   invasions of the ninth and tenth centuries. On paleographical   grounds, in that volume and his own book of the same year, Kevin   Kiernan even advanced a theory that the composition of the poem is as   late as the production of the MS. itself (ca. A.D. 1020, in his   view). For objections to Kiernan's theory, see R. D. Fulk in \u003ci\u003ePQ\u003c\/i\u003e for   1982, among others. On different paleographical grounds, Michael   Lapidge recently posited an archetype of the surviving MS. dated to   no later than A.D. 750 (see \u003ci\u003eASE\u003c\/i\u003e 29), while Fulk's analysis of the   poem's meter and phonology suggested initial composition by no later   than 725 if originally Mercian, or 825 if originally Northumbrian   (see his \u003ci\u003eHistory\u003c\/i\u003e,  420). On the other hand, the earlier   groundbreaking work of Ashley Crandall Amos convinced many of us that   there are few, if any, safe linguistic grounds for dating Old English   poems. Writing in 1997 not only about its date, but also the poem's   provenance, author, and audiences, Robert E. Bjork and Anita   Obermeier noted a trend for scholars to prefer a later date and   possibly a southern locale, but they concluded that we have arrived   only \"at a cautious and necessary incertitude\" (\u003ci\u003eHandbook\u003c\/i\u003e, p. 33).   This remains true today. (Further discussion by Liuzza in Baker, Howe   in Chase 1997 rpt., Fulk in\u003ci\u003e ASE\u003c\/i\u003e 32, Cronan in ASE 33, and Newton, \u003ci\u003eThe   Origins of \"Beowulf.\"\u003c\/i\u003e)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    I still hold the same views about \"Composition and Authorship\" (pp.   249-52 above) without any substantial change of opinion about the   oral vs. written controversy. Even if we accept the idea that the   extant text is the product of many re-singings by more than one scop,   we still can decide to take our unique MS. copy as what we choose to   experience as the poem. It could even be argued that, since we live   in our own writing-bound culture, we can only have a literary   experience of this one text recorded in writing, to which most   readers respond as if to a unified sensibility, though not provably a   single \"author.\" Nevertheless, the study of \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e as traditional   oral poetry has seen great advances since the 1970s, particularly in   the work of John Miles Foley and John D. Niles. Equally valuable is   Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe's \u003ci\u003eVisible Song\u003c\/i\u003e, a pioneering description   of what she calls \"transitional literacy.\" The late Edward B. Irving,   Jr.'s, \u003ci\u003eRereading \"Beowulf\"\u003c\/i\u003e is perhaps the best recent volume of   literary criticism based upon the notion of oral composition; his   close readings often transcend the controversy. Andy Orchard has   conveniently charted the repeated formulas in the poem for the light   they might throw \"on the poem's structure or the poet's compositional   technique (or both)\": see his \u003ci\u003eCompanion\u003c\/i\u003e, Appendices II and III.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    As for the prosody of the poem, I continue to feel confident that a   careful perusal and enthusiastic application of the Guide to Reading   Aloud (pp. 29-38 above) will, with a little coaching or listening to   a tape, give the reader everything necessary for voicing \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e   aloud as poetry, that is, as formed speech that obeys its own   artistic rules. Yet it is important to note that the intensive   analysis of Beowulfian prosody, and of Old English meter generally,   has gone far beyond the systems of scansion described in my Guide. I   would call particular attention to the works by Cable, Creed, Fulk,   Hutcheson, Kendall, and Russom. I also acknowledge an important   omission in not having mentioned in the Guide the central work of A.   J. Bliss. All these works are perhaps only for specialists, but any   one of them can improve the ear of a reciting reader.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is a truism of literary study that we do not read a text without   supplying some sort of context for it. And we choose the contexts in   which we understand it on the basis of our own often unexamined   assumptions. Today Anglo-Saxon studies as a field has gained a sharp   self-consciousness about its own assumptions. In \u003ci\u003eThe Search for   Anglo-Saxon Paganism\u003c\/i\u003e, E. G. Stanley described the attitudes of the   nineteenth-century Continental scholars who invented this academic   subject, while Carl T. Berkhout and others have described in detail   the careers of English Renaissance antiquaries, including Lawrence   Nowell, the first known possessor of the \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e manuscript. The most   searching examination of the ways we have constructed our contexts,   and the motives behind them, has come from Allen J. Frantzen. His   book \u003ci\u003eDesire for Origins\u003c\/i\u003e makes it crystal clear that the contexts for   the study of \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e do not exist on their own somewhere in the past,   waiting to be discovered by modern scholars, but rather that we   invent and apply them as our predilections lead us. Over the years,   critics' views of the poem have been shaped (not always consciously)   by religious, political, and nationalistic motivations.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    There are many critical approaches to \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e, using different   contexts. Some apply distinctly modern theoretical concepts and do   not bear upon my reading of the poem. Interesting examples of   deconstructionist and feminist approaches may be found in Gillian   Overing's \u003ci\u003eLanguage, Sign, and Gender in \"Beowulf,\" \u003c\/i\u003ewhile James W.   Earl uses what he calls \"psychoanalytic anthropology\" in his \u003ci\u003eThinking   About \"Beowulf.\"\u003c\/i\u003e Other critics have approached the poem in the   context of Anglo-Saxon cultural history; see particularly Nicholas   Howe, \u003ci\u003eMigration and Mythmaking\u003c\/i\u003e, and Craig R. Davis, \u003ci\u003eDemise of   Germanic Legend\u003c\/i\u003e. Still others have examined the world of the poem   from the viewpoint of anthropology, as does John M. Hill in \u003ci\u003eThe   Cultural World\u003c\/i\u003e. See further his chapter on \"Social Milieu\" in the   \u003ci\u003eHandbook\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The great majority of literary studies take the poem itself as   providing most of its own contexts, though sometimes those contexts   are linked with other poetic or historical texts. The critical topics   are of course quite various. A sampling might include diction,   variation, formulas, macrostructure, microstructure, unity, episodes   and digressions, myths, historical analogues, literary analogues,   allegory, and symbolism. These and other topics are treated   extensively in different chapters of the \u003ci\u003eHandbook\u003c\/i\u003e. I have already had   my say in my Introduction, Background, and Commentary about what I   consider the most important literary features of the poem. Recent   collections of literary criticism of \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e include those edited by   Baker, Donoghue, Fulk, and Howe. The best short book-length treatment   of the poem remains George Clark's 1990 \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e in Twayne's English   Authors series.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    The historical contexts possible for the poem are continually being   enriched in one way or another. Students of literature were grateful   indeed when three distinguished Anglo-Saxon historians brought out   \u003ci\u003eThe Anglo-Saxons\u003c\/i\u003e in 1982 (listed under Campbell in Section IV of the   Bibliography), an up-to-date and integrated overview of Anglo-Saxon   political and social history. Although we do not know in which   century, or in which Anglo-Saxon kingdom or monastery, the poem   should be located, the more that we can know about the period, the   better. The literary history of the entire period has been treated by   Greenfield and Calder, and most recently by Fulk and Cain. Students   will also find useful introductions to Old English literature in   Donoghue's book of that name, and in the collections edited by Godden   and Lapidge, and by Liuzza. Two collections that focus on current   critical approaches are edited by Aertsen and Bremmer, and by O'Brien   O'Keeffe.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    One historical context for the poem that has developed considerably   in recent years has been archaeology. In 1977 the Sutton Hoo   ship-burial and the great hall at Yeavering dominated our perception   of the relationship between the poem and material reality. Sutton Hoo   remained the determining context for the goods and burial customs   mentioned in \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e all during the time that scholars believed the   poem had to have an early date. (See further Roberta Frank, \"The Odd   Couple.\") But British medieval archaeology has developed at a rapid   rate since the 1970s, and there have been notable new Anglo-Saxon and   Viking discoveries. Comparisons with archaeological finds elsewhere   in Northern Europe have also proven fruitful. Catherine M. Hills   sketched archaeological developments to 1992 in her chapter in the   \u003ci\u003eHandbook\u003c\/i\u003e and concluded, interestingly enough, that the Anglo-Saxon   evidence found up to that point was \"at least partly compatible with   a later date of composition than that usually suggested by reference   to Sutton Hoo\" (her p. 310). For work subsequent to 1992, see the   \"Archaeology\" section in \"The Year's Work in Old English Studies\" in   \u003ci\u003eOEN\u003c\/i\u003e.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThen there is the perennial double question of the nature of the hero   and the metaphysical design in which the poem places him. Analyses of   both Beowulf's character and the poet's viewpoint on the story have   proceeded apace in the last few decades without any final resolution,   and none is likely to occur soon. Most interpretations of the poem's   design and purpose have usually been bound up with assumptions about   its presumed historical circumstance. Even if we did not have to make   unprovable assumptions about an historical context, any consensus in   criticism would probably continue to be thwarted by the poem's   elliptical and ironic strategies of both style and design. The poet   rarely commits himself to a single judgment on the actions of his   characters, offering instead competing perspectives and oblique   analogies.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    Recent scholarship has refined the meanings of what too often are   undefined blanket terms in the criticism of \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e, \"Christian\" and   \"pagan,\" so much so that I would no longer dare to say, as I do on p.   259 above, that the Germanic and Christian traditions are as fused in   \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e as they were in Anglo-Saxon society. Such a statement assumes   too symmetrical an analogy between literature and life. Moreover,   while there may have been different kinds of fusion in various   periods and social strata, critics of the poem continue to disagree   on whether the Germanic past of the story is fused with, or at odds   with, the evident Christianity of the poet.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe can describe with confidence the Christian concepts in the poem   (see pp. 258-60, 268-77 above, and Orchard, \u003ci\u003eCompanion\u003c\/i\u003e, pp. 130-68),   but the precise type of \"Christianity\" enjoyed by the poet and his   audience will depend on which century we choose to place the poem. In   an important reappraisal of seventh- and eighth-century sources, the   late Patrick Wormald (p. 414 below) showed that our modern   understanding of the Conversion had been skewed by an overreliance on   a single source, the Venerable Bede, and his persuasive picture of a   wholesale exchange of one set of values for another. Wormald   demonstrated that both secular poetry and ecclesiastical prose were   products of an aristocratic society, and argued that this \"warrior   nobility\" had successfully assimilated the new faith while retaining   many of its earlier values (his p. 57). If we choose to date the poem   later in the period, it is probably equally unwise to think of a   monolithic Anglo-Saxon world-view, particularly in the Danelaw:   Judith Jesch has recently described the evidence for a \"light pagan   colouring\" that continued for several generations among   Anglo-Scandinavians in northern England during the tenth and eleventh   centuries. For that period, she urges that we abandon \"our strictly   dichotomous and antithetical view of paganism and Christianity\"   (\"Scandinavians and 'Cultural Paganism' in Late Anglo-Saxon England,\"   in Cavill, pp. 55-68; quotes on p. 67).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e    In his chapter on this topic in the \u003ci\u003eHandbook\u003c\/i\u003e, Edward B. Irving, Jr.,   usefully discusses the three different meanings \"pagan\" has had in   \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e criticism: literal, vestigial, and ethical (his pp. 177-80).   As for the Christianity of the poem itself, he finds it \"distinctly   limited\" and \"tailored to the dimensions of heroic poetry\" (his p.   186; see further his essay in ASE 13). Irving's view assumes that the   poem belongs to a single genre, heroic poetry. However, as has been   said many times, \u003ci\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/i\u003e is a poem that is over before it begins; it   anticipates its end in its beginning. Its \"pastness\" and its elegiac   elements are undeniable. The poet's view of his noble characters and   their actions in the past may well be critical while at the same time   admiring (pp. 27, 377, 379 above). The most influential presentation   in the last twenty years of this binocular view of the poem has been   Fred C. Robinson's elegant little book, \u003ci\u003e\"Beowulf\" and the Appositive   Style\u003c\/i\u003e (p. 414 below), which takes the position of E. G. Stanley's   article on the \"Haethenra Hyht\" (p. 408 below) and extends it through   a masterful presentation of the poet's deployment of appositions of   several kinds: lexical, grammatical, and narrative.With a New Afterword and Expanded Bibliography","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303089623269,"sku":"NP9781400096220","price":17.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781400096220.jpg?v=1767722435","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/beowulf-isbn-9781400096220","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}