PS
something about Beowulf has the same feel as Spenser's archaisms, or
MacDiarmid's fake book Lallans (without MacDiarmid's lyricism)
Best
Dave
2008/11/23 David Bircumshaw <[log in to unmask]>:
> My take on Beowulf is that, although it is linguistically interesting,
> poetically it is boring, there is a dullness in its repetitive
> rhythms, the dead-handed praisewords, and the tacked-on Christian
> moralising, that makes one glad not to have been part of the culture
> it purportedly came from (there has always been a suspicion lurking
> that it's a fraud anyhow, that might sound crazy; why would anyone do
> that, but there are things like the Voynich manuscript, the hoax that
> no-one can read, there's certainly something of a manufactured feel to
> its vocabulary)
>
> Deor, or Wulf and Eadwacer, are real poems that survive from the
> Anglo-Saxons, and they have real beauty, Beowulf by contrast is as
> about as stimulating as The Excursion, except for its apparent
> historical interest.
>
> It is death to 'translate' it, even the term is a misnomer: how do you
> translate from a language into itself?
>
> 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
>
--
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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