"Beowulf" and Other Old English Poems
Edited and translated by Craig Williamson. Foreword by Tom Shippey
288 pages | 6 x 9 | 2 illus.
Cloth 2011 | ISBN 978-0-8122-4345-1 | $45.00 | £29.50
A volume in the Middle Ages Series
"Craig Williamson's Beowulf is superior, both in truth to the original and in readability, to any other version of the poem now available. Surprisingly many modern poets have tried to recreate the old alliterative poetry in modern English, Auden being only the most prominent of them, and while it is quite easy to write alliterative verse, it is hard indeed to do it well. Williamson's translations are very good and very accurate, which is a difficult combination to achieve."–Tom Shippey
Rarely are these works translated by someone who is both a medieval scholar and a poet, and this combination makes for both fidelity to the complexity of the originals and compelling poetry in a modern idiom.
Click here to listen to Williamson read from his translation of Beowulf and discuss his approach to poetry translation.
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