One of the interesting things about Beowulf is that nobody seems to
have known about it to the early seventeenth century: the manuscript
seems to date from at least the 11th century but all that proves is
that the material it was written on dates from then. The Gawayne poem
, by contrast, does seem to have been in a vague awareness. The
earliest conjectured date for the ms's existence is its supposed
existence in 1563, Beowulf seems to have come into the world following
Spenser's cod antiquarianism, along the desire to provide antiquity
for the new English then British state.
We know Shakespeare's history plays are in a certain sense Tudor
propaganda, but, I at least, pace Auden on Claudel, can pardon him for
writing well, but Beowulf, it's abou as good as Colin Clot's Come Home
Again.
Best
Dave
2008/11/23 Robin Hamilton <[log in to unmask]>:
> <<
> keep meaning to get a version that has the original alongside the
> transcription/interpretation.
>>>
>
> Tina,
>
> You might want to consider:
>
> Beowulf: A Glossed Text
> By Michael Alexander
> Published by Penguin Classics, 1995
> ISBN 0140433775, 9780140433777
> 237 pages
>
> It's not quite a parallel text, but one *heavily glossed on the right hand
> facing page.
>
> You can get an idea of what it's like from google books, which allows you to
> read as far as about line 20.
>
>
> http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KFlpxcQftwoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_summary_r&cad=0
>
> There are, I think, several versions of the original text on the Web as well
> as various out-of-copyright translations.
>
> Best,
>
> Robin
>
--
David Bircumshaw
Website and A Chide's Alphabet http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/
The Animal Subsides http://www.arrowheadpress.co.uk/books/animal.html
Leicester Poetry Society: http://www.poetryleicester.co.uk
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