It's hard for me to read anything more than about 50 lines in
alliterative meter without getting restless -- it does thump along. M&S
have taken more frequent liberties than the original, allowing almost
any pattern that alliterates 3 of 4 stresses (there are exceptions, but
in the original it's almost always 2 in the first and 1 in the second
hemistitch), occasional alliteration on unstressed syllables, and very
occasional cross-alliteration in a line.
On Wednesday, August 8, 2001, at 03:53 AM, Candice Ward wrote:
> Thanks very much, Michael, for the link to this site, which I didn't
> know,
> and the news of the forthcoming translation. (I particularly liked the
> site's comparative translation page--what a labor of love!) Not sure
> what to
> make of the Murphy & Sullivan rendition, which at first glance seems
> rather
> comic-book (but then so is Beowulf), and its sing-songy rhythm gets
> monotonous pretty quickly for me. But I need to give it a more thorough
> study.
>
> Very glad to see a link at this site to Kevin Kiernan's Electronic
> Beowulf
> Project--the most spectacular new work on the text since the Creed and
> Foley
> digital-metrics analyses of the 1980s, I'd say.
>
> Candice
>
>
>
> on 8/6/01 11:10 AM, Michael Snider at [log in to unmask] wrote:
>
>> Tim Murphy and Alan Sullivan's new translation will be in the next
>> edition of Longman's -- meanwhile, there's a generous selection from it
>> at http://www.jps.net/pdeane/fgr/beoInfo.htm
>>
>> Also has a link to an Anglo-Saxon net text.
>>
>> On Monday, August 6, 2001, at 12:38 AM, Robin Hamilton wrote:
>>>
>>>> Trick question! (Go ask Shameless Seamus, why dontcha?)
>>>
>>> See above. I refuse to reopen Heaney's translation without greater
>>> provocation.
>
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