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On Translating Beowulf
"On Translating ''Beowulf''" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the difficulties faced by anyone attempting to translate the Old English heroic-elegiac poem ''Beowulf'' into modern English. It was first published in 1940 as a preface contributed by Tolkien to a translation of Old English poetry; it was first published as an essay under its current name in the 1983 collection ''The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays''. In the essay, Tolkien explains the difficulty of translating individual words from Old English, noting that a word like ''eacen'' ('large', 'strong', 'supernaturally powerful') cannot readily be translated by the same word in each case. He notes the problem of translating poetic kennings such as ''sundwudu'' ('flood-timber', i.e. 'ship') and that the language chosen by the poet was already archaic at that moment. He explains that such terms had echoes and connotations of another world, an "unrecapturable magic". The essay describes Old Engli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beowulf Cotton MS Vitellius A XV F
''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between 975 and 1025. Scholars call the anonymous author the "''Beowulf'' poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 6th century. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall in Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a tower on a headland in his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Funeral Ale
Norse funerals, or the burial customs of Viking Age North Germanic Norsemen (early medieval Scandinavians), are known both from archaeology and from historical accounts such as the Icelandic sagas and Old Norse poetry. Throughout Scandinavia, there are many remaining tumuli in honour of Viking kings and chieftains, in addition to runestones and other memorials. Some of the most notable of them are at the Borre mound cemetery, in Norway, at Birka in Sweden and Lindholm Høje, and Jelling in Denmark. A prominent tradition is that of the ship burial, where the deceased was laid in a boat, or a stone ship, and given grave offerings in accordance with his earthly status and profession, sometimes including sacrificed slaves. Afterwards, piles of stone and soil were usually laid on top of the remains in order to create a tumulus. Additional practices included sacrifice or cremation, but the most common was to bury the departed with goods that denoted their social status. Grave goods ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Essays By J
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element (self-revelation, individual tastes and experiences, confidential manner), humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc. Essays are commonly used as literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. Almost all modern essays are written in prose, but works in verse have been dubbed essays (e.g., Alexander Pope's ''An Essay on Criticism'' and ''An Essay on Man''). While brevity usually defines an essay, voluminous works like John Locke's ''An Ess ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synecdoche
Synecdoche ( ) is a type of metonymy: it is a figure of speech in which a term for a part of something is used to refer to the whole (''pars pro toto''), or vice versa (''totum pro parte''). The term comes from Greek . Examples in common English use are ''suits'' for ''businessmen'', ''wheels'' for ''car'', and ''boots'' for ''soldiers''. The use of government buildings to refer to their occupants is metonymy and sometimes also synecdoche. "The Pentagon" for the United States Department of Defense can be considered synecdoche, because the building can be considered part of the bureaucracy. In the same way, using " Number 10" to mean "the Office of the Prime Minister" (of the United Kingdom) is a synecdoche. Definition Synecdoche is a rhetorical trope and a kind of metonymy—a figure of speech using a term to denote one thing to refer to a related thing. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Monsters And The Critics
"''Beowulf'': The Monsters and the Critics" was a 1936 lecture given by J. R. R. Tolkien on literary criticism on the Old English heroic epic poem ''Beowulf''. It was first published as a paper in the ''Proceedings of the British Academy'', and has since been reprinted in many collections. Tolkien argues that the original poem has almost been lost under the weight of the scholarship on it; that ''Beowulf'' must be seen as a poem, not just as a historical document; and that the quality of its verse and its structure give it a powerful effect. He rebuts suggestions that the poem is an epic or exciting narrative, likening it instead to a strong masonry structure built of blocks that fit together. He points out that the poem's theme is a serious one, mortality, and that the poem is in two parts: the first on Beowulf as a young man, defeating Grendel and his mother; the second on Beowulf in old age, going to his death fighting the dragon. The work has been praised by critics includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Mitchell
Philip Mitchell is an English author, playwright, poet and translator. Born in Manchester, England he is an established author with BBC Radio Drama and was a question-setter on the UK game show ''Bacha Hi O'Ma!'' (the Welsh equivalent of ''Blind Date'') but is perhaps best known for his acclaimed translation of Caradog Prichard's Welsh language novel ''Un Nos Ola Leuad'', as ''One Moonlit Night'' (). The translation was adapted for broadcast as a radio play (by Mitchell himself) and was transmitted on BBC Radio 4. It was also adapted for the stage and was performed at several theatres including Theatr Clwyd in Mold, Theatr Gwynedd in Bangor, and The Young Vic in London. Mitchell discovered Prichard's novel when studying Welsh A-level (for which it was a set text) and was surprised to find that it had never been translated fully into English. Indeed, there were those who claimed the novel could ''not'' be translated into English as it is written entirely in a dialect common in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hugh Magennis (scholar)
Hugh Magennis is a scholar of Old English and the author of several books on Anglo-Saxon society and poetry, including especially ''Beowulf''. Biography Hugh Magennis gained his bachelor's degree at Queen's University Belfast in 1970. He obtained his master's degree there in 1972 and his PhD also there in 1981. He joined the staff of the university in the 1970s, becoming a full professor, head of its School of English and director of its Institute of Theology. He served from 2004 as chair of the Teachers of Old English in Britain and Ireland, and from 2011 its honorary president. Honours and distinctions A ''festschrift'' called ''Saints and Scholars: New Perspectives on Anglo-Saxon Literature and Culture in Honour of Hugh Magennis'', was published in 2012. A collection of studies in his honour, entitled "Holy and Unholy Appetites in Anglo-Saxon England" was published the same year in ''English Studies''. Magennis became a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2006. He is a Fe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mythlore
''Mythlore'' is a biannual (originally quarterly) peer-reviewed academic journal founded by Glen GoodKnight and published by the Mythopoeic Society. Although it publishes articles that explore the genres of myth and fantasy in general, special attention is given to the three most prominent members of the Inklings: J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams. The current editor-in-chief is the Tolkien scholar Janet Brennan Croft. The Tolkien Society describes ''Mythlore'' as a "refereed scholarly journal". History ''Mythlore'' appeared in January 1969 under the editorship of Glen H. GoodKnight, founder of the Mythopoeic Society. Early issues were fanzines, albeit with a "sercon" ("serious and constructive") bent; for a time it included alternate issues of ''Mythprint''. ''Mythlore'' became a peer-reviewed journal beginning with issue #85 (Winter 1999), under the editorship of Theodore Sherman. Since 2006, it has been edited by Janet Brennan Croft. The full text of ''My ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Lay Of The Children Of Húrin
The Lay of the Children of Húrin is a long epic poem by J. R. R. Tolkien which takes place in his fictional fantasy-world, Middle-earth. It tells of the life and ill fate of Túrin Turambar, the son of Húrin. It is written in alliterative verse and exists in several versions, but was never finished. The poem was published after the author's death by his son Christopher Tolkien in the 1985 ''The Lays of Beleriand'', the third volume of ''The History of Middle-earth''; he later published a completed, book-length form of the poem in the 2007 ''The Children of Húrin''. Composition As Christopher Tolkien records, his father said in a "later (and perhaps hesitant) statement" that he began the Lay in 1918. Christopher Tolkien states that it was likely composed mainly at Leeds before his father began working on ''The Lay of Leithian'' during the summer of 1925. It was written in two versions. The first was written half on slips of paper and half on exam pages from the University of Le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parallelism (grammar)
In grammar, parallelism, also known as parallel structure or parallel construction, is a balance within one or more sentences of similar phrases or clauses that have the same grammatical structure. The application of parallelism affects readability and may make texts easier to process. Parallelism may be accompanied by other figures of speech such as antithesis, anaphora, asyndeton, climax, epistrophe, and symploce. Examples Compare the following examples: All of the above examples are grammatically correct, even if they lack parallelism: "cooking", "jogging", and "to read" are all grammatically valid conclusions to "She likes", for instance. The first nonparallel example has a mix of gerunds and infinitives. To make it parallel, the sentence can be rewritten with all gerunds or all infinitives. The second example pairs a gerund with a regular noun. Parallelism can be achieved by converting both terms to gerunds or to infinitives. The final phrase of the third example does not ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anglo-Saxon Poetic Line
Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is ''Beowulf'', but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition. The most salient feature of Old English poetry is its heavy use of alliteration. Alliteration The basic Anglo-Saxon poetic line consists of two half-lines, connected by alliteration. This means that there is a word or syllable in the second half-line, which will alliterate with one or more important words or syllables in the first half-line. These alliterated words or syllables will have more stress. Consonants will always alliterate with consonants, but a vowel is allowed to alliterate with any other vowel. As in all Old English poetry, the alliterative form can be seen in the "Finnsburg Fragment" (alliterated sounds are in bold): Ac onwacnigeað nū, wīgend mīne "But awake now, my warrio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Werewolf
In folklore, a werewolf (), or occasionally lycanthrope (; ; uk, Вовкулака, Vovkulaka), is an individual that can shapeshift into a wolf (or, especially in modern film, a therianthropic hybrid wolf-like creature), either purposely or after being placed under a curse or affliction (often a bite or the occasional scratch from another werewolf) with the transformations occurring on the night of a full moon. Early sources for belief in this ability or affliction, called lycanthropy (), are Petronius (27–66) and Gervase of Tilbury (1150–1228). The werewolf is a widespread concept in European folklore, existing in many variants, which are related by a common development of a Christian interpretation of underlying European folklore developed during the Christendom, medieval period. From the early modern period, werewolf beliefs also spread to the New World with colonialism. Belief in werewolves developed in parallel to the belief in European witchcraft, witches, in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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