1. Preface
J.R.R. Tolkien: Beowulf – prose translation and its commentary (textual stages and witnesses)
1. Preface
1.1. On Tolkien’s Beowulf scripts
(cf. Drout 2015, 149–153)
1.4. On Christopher Tolkien’s ›edition‹
(cf. Tolkien 2016, xiii; Drout 2015, 153f.)
• »The same could be said of this book. I have most emphatically not seen my role in the editions of Sigurd and Gudrún or The Fall of Arthur as the offering of a critical survey of his views, as some seem to have thought that it should be. The present work should best be regarded as a ›memorial volume‹, a ›portrait‹ (as it were) of the scholar in his time, in words of his own, hitherto unpublished.« (Tolkien 2016, xiii)
• Critique of the exclusion of the alliterative poetic translation from Christopher Tolkien’s edition: »The exclusion of the alliterative poetic translation from the edition is more puzzling. This translation is a well-done piece of poetry, truer to the original in both form and content than any other poetic translation of Beowulf. Except for W. H. Auden, Tolkien was perhaps the finest alliterative poet of the 20th century, and general readers would very likely enjoy the poetic translation more than they will the prose.« (Drout 2015, 152)
• »Being working drafts and scripts for lectures rather than polished work, many of these texts are extremely messy and difficult to read. They often repeat and at times contradict each other, so editing them into a consistent discussion of the poem would likely have been an impossible task. Christopher Tolkien was surely correct in choosing one of the more finished commentaries for the book.« (Drout 2015, 152)
• for an overview of all scripts related to Tolkien’s translations and commentaries see table 1 with additions from the text in Drout 2015, 149–151)
Schema for the following book:
Tolkien, J.R.R.: Beowulf. A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell [2014], edited by Christopher Tolkien, HarperCollins: London 2016 [978-0-00-759009-4].
• His intention was »to read through in one sitting all of Beowulf in modern prose from his own translation, which is not intended to imitate the style of the poem but instead to help his students to grasp the poem ›whole and entire‹. He states that such a reading will take only one or two hours, and that he will then supplement the straightforward prose translation with shorter pieces from his verse translation.« (Drout 2015, 154)
• »Students would use such a translation to help explicate the Old English text, referring to the translation when they were having difficulties parsing the syntax of a sentence or recognizing unusual word forms. To be useful as a teaching and learning aid, a prose translation must above all else be accurate, taking no liberties for the sake of ornamentation or smoothness of idiom in Modern English. Students also need to be able to determine easily which lines of the original language are being translated at any given point.« (Drout 2015, 154f.)
1.2. On the purpose of Tolkien’s prose translation
• »Taken as a whole, in both content and style, Tolkien’s is the equal of any previous prose translation (though this is in itself, sadly, not a particularly high standard). It is accurate and transmits some of the high formality and serious tone that Beowulf has in Old English. I doubt, however, that it will replace Seamus Heaney’s poetic translation of Beowulf as the text most introductory students encounter. Although Heaney’s translation is poetic, it in many ways makes more concessions to Modern English syntax and style and is thus a bit easier to read. But the quality of a translation is not measured by its potential popularity. Tolkien’s prose Beowulf is a successful rendering of the Old English poem and provides both illumination and pleasure to its reader. Experience shows that when read aloud by a gifted speaker, some passages have great rhetorical and aesthetic power.« (Drout 2015, 157)
1.3. On the translation itself
(cf. Drout 2015, 155–157.)