"Beowulf" and Other Old English Poems

Craig Williamson is the Alfred H. and Peggi Bloom Professor of English Literature at Swarthmore College. He is editor and translator of A Feast of Creatures, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Tom Shippey is Professor Emeritus of English at St. Louis University.

• Foreword by Tom ShippeyNote on EditionsGuide to Pronouncing Old EnglishOn Translating Old English PoetryBEOWULFIntroductionBeowulfOTHER OLD ENGLISH POEMSA Note on GenresHeroic or Historical PoemsThe Battle of MaldonDeorElegiesThe WandererThe SeafarerThe Wife's LamentWulf and EadwacerSelected Exeter Book RiddlesRiddlesGnomic or Wisdom PoemsMaxims II (Cotton Maxims)CharmsThe Fortunes of MenReligious PoemsCÆdmon's HymnPhysiologus: Panther and WhaleVaingloryTwo Advent LyricsThe Dream of the RoodAppendix A. "Digressions": Battles, Feuds, and Family Strife in BeowulfAppendix B. Genealogies in BeowulfAppendix C. Two Scandinavian Analogues of BeowulfAppendix D. Possible Riddle SolutionsGlossary of Proper NamesBibliographyIndexAcknowledgments

"The translation of Beowulf is a notoriously difficult task, and Williamson is to be commended for producing a fluent and lively text that recalls the language of the original to the beginning student of Old English literature." (Comitatus) "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) "These are modern renderings with bite and muscle, full of chewy sounds to delight any ear or voice, entering the mute reader's eye and resounding within: at times filling a raucous hall, at times gently whispering into an interior fold of woe, of memory. In these resonant spaces we hear again the scop's voice." (Benjamin Bagby, performer of Beowulf and director of the medieval music ensemble Sequentia)