Classics and the Western Canon discussion

It’s been quite a challenge to set up a schedule because the poem isn’t divided into convenient, digestible chapters. To further complicate matters, the translations don’t correspond in terms of line numbers. So, I’ve had to muddle through the best I can. I’ve divided it up at what I hope are natural breaks to make it easy to follow.

I’ve intentionally set the schedule at a leisurely, eight-week pace because we’re dealing with poetry, which, by definition, says a lot in a few words. I can increase the pace later, if necessary. I’m hoping we’ll have fun comparing word choices in the different translations to determine if and how that changes the tone of the poem.

Since we’re reading different translations, the best I can do is cite line numbers in the two main translations I’ll be using—the Stephen Mitchell and the Seamus Heaney. The line numbers may not correspond exactly with the translation you’re using, so I’m including a blurb to indicate the end of the week’s reading. This should give you an approximate location for the reading. It averages out to between 11-16 pages (approx. 380 lines) per week, depending on your translation. I hope this makes sense.

Here goes:

Week 1: June 2 – June 8
Mitchell: lines 1-472
Heaney: lines 1-498
(Stop at Unferth’s challenge of Beowulf)

Week 2: June 9 – June 15
Mitchell: lines 473-798 (beginning with line, “Then Unferth, the son of Ecglaf, spoke,”)
Heaney: lines 499-835 (beginning with the line, “From where he crouched at the king’s feet”)
(Stop when Beowulf displays Grendel’s shoulder and arm)

Week 3: June 16 – June 22
Mitchell: lines 799-1197 (beginning with the line, “Many warriors gathered that morning”)
Heaney: lines 836-1250 (beginning with the line, “Then morning came and many a warrior”)
(Stop at the end of the banquet when they go to sleep)

Week 4: June 23 – June 29
Mitchell: lines 1198-1577 (beginning with the line, “They went to sleep then, and one paid dearly”)
Heaney: lines 1251-1650 (beginning with the line, “They went to sleep. And one paid dearly”)
(Stop at Beowulf’s presentation of Grendel’s head to Hrothgar)

Week 5: June 30 – July 6
Mitchell: lines 1578-1987 (beginning with the line, “Then Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke”)
Heaney: lines 1651-2068 (beginning with the line, “Beowulf, son of Ecgtheow, spoke”)
(Stop before Beowulf describes his fight with Grendel)

Week 6: July 7 – July 13
Mitchell: lines 1988-2304 (beginning with the line, “And now, my lord, I would like to tell you”)
Heaney: lines 2069-2396 (beginning with the line, “But now, my lord”)
(Stop just before Beowulf sets out to look for the dragon’s lair with his 11 comrades)

Week 7: July 14 – July 20
Mitchell: lines 2305-2714 (beginning with the line, “And so the son of Ecgtheow survived”)
Heaney: lines 2397-2820 (beginning with the line, “And so the son of Ecgtheow had survived”)
(Until Beowulf’s death)

Week 8: July 21 – July 27
Mitchell: lines 2715-end (beginning with the line, “It was bitter then for the brave young hero”)
Heaney: lines 2821-end (beginning with the line, “It was hard then on the young hero”)
The poem as a whole

The divisions look sensible to me, anyway.

The differing line numbers are in part due to different ideas on how close to the original verse -- that is very concise -- the translation should be, as opposed to how readily intelligible -- that is using comparatively expansive modern English grammar and sentence structure.

This means that some otherwise close translations aren't suitable for this purpose. As an outstanding example, Tolkien's (prose) translation, meant largely for students tackling the poem for the first time, didn't stick closely to the line breaks, but worked hard to bring out the literal meaning.

As a result, Christopher Tolkien supplied original line numbers in the accompanying Commentary. This is drawn from his father's lecture notes from decades of teaching the poem to often reluctant students of the Oxford "English School." The notes break off in the latter portion, which was not part of the official syllabus, so the line numbers aren't regularly supplied.

An alternative method suggests itself, but I don't think it would be a good idea to use it. The manuscript divides the poem into an unnumbered prologue and forty-three "fitts" of varying length, and sometimes obscure narrative logic. Technically, it skips a number, which caused some early editors to conclude that a whole "canto" was missing, but this has long been recognized as a typical scribal error, and the missing number inserted where it probably belonged. (This strongly suggests that the numbering went back to an older copy, and the later scribe missed one, but an original scribal error in the extant manuscript can't be ruled out.)

Unfortunately, not only are the divisions sometimes less than helpful, they are not indicated in all translations.

However, a number of translations some of us may be using do include the line original numbers, at least at short intervals (like Garmonsway), so I'll consider working up a version of the schedule using the Old English line numbers, IF anyone thinks that this will be helpful. I would post it at intervals, as we approach the passages in question.

I'd probably do this mainly via Chickering's Dual-Language edition, as it is the simplest to use for this purpose. His translation is rarely more than a line or two off, and mainly due to the demands of English grammar, and the facing original makes it easy to spot divergences.

If someone else is using it (or, say, Alexander's glossed text, or Fulk's bilingual version, in The Beowulf Manuscript), and is reading a bit ahead of schedule, I'd be happy to see any of us jump in on this as well.

Thank you, Tamara - I have managed to find the divisions in my Danish version. So I am all set to go.

Thank you Tamara for setting up the schedule.

I will use both Heaney's verse translation and Tolkien's prose translation.

I've noticed there are other members who will read Tolkien's Beowulf, so I identified the divisions. The page numbers in parenthesis are for this edition Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell


Week 1: June 2 – June 8
From line 1 "Lo! The glory of the kings "(p. 13)
To line 405 "valour of Danes and Wederas" (p. 27)


Week 2: June 9 – June 15
From line 406 "Unferth spake" (p. 27)
To line 680 "Grendel's clutching limb entire. "(p. 36)


Week 3: June 16 – June 22
From line 681 "Then have I heard" (p. 36)
To line 1038 "a worthy company was that "( p. 49)


Week 4: June 23 – June 29
From line 1039 "Now they sank into sleep "(p. 49)
To line 1384 "Men gazed thereon. "(p. 61)


Week 5: June 30 – July 6
From line 1385 "Beowulf spake, "(p. 61)
To line 1739 "their friendship insecure." ( p.73)


Week 6: July 7 – July 13
From line 1740 "I shall speak on "( p. 73)
To line 2016 "the king he reft of life." (p. 83)


Week 7: July 14 – July 20
From line 2017 "Even thus had he, "(p.83)
To line 2371 "to seek the judgement of the just. "( p95)


Week 8: July 21 – July 27
From line 2372 "Then grievous was the lot" (p 95)
To line 2669 "praise most eager."( p105)


If anyone is reading this particular edition, I would also like to discuss Tolkien's Sellic Spell which is based on Beowulf.

Charlotte wrote: "Thank you, Tamara - I have managed to find the divisions in my Danish version. So I am all set to go."

Great, Charlotte! I'm delighted to see you're on board with us.

Emil wrote: "Thank you Tamara for setting up the schedule.

I will use both Heaney's verse translation and Tolkien's prose translation.

I've noticed there are other members who will read Tolkien's Beowulf, s..."

Thank you, Emil.

Emil wrote: "If anyone is reading this particular edition, I would also like to discuss Tolkien's Sellic Spell which is based on Beowulf."

Emil, if there is sufficient interest in doing this, I can set up a separate thread for discussing it so it does't detract from the main discussion of Beowulf.

Tamara wrote: "Emil wrote: "If anyone is reading this particular edition, I would also like to discuss Tolkien's Sellic Spell which is based on Beowulf."

Emil, if there is sufficient interest in doing this, I ca..."

I would be interested (since I'll be reading Tolkien's translation anyway, especially the commentary on the first two thirds). And I agree that it should be a separate thread.

But there could be some crossover if we happen to get into a discussion on the main thread of the extent to which Beowulf is an historicized "Fairy Tale," an occasional issue in academic disputes.

Ian wrote: "an occasional issue in academic disputes. ..."

Come on now, Ian!! (Grinning as I write this....) (view spoiler)[If I am being offensive, please let your ire be at me only, Ian. But Eman did long ago cudgel me into general agreement on making Western Canon discussions as generally accessible as possible. I think you bring a wonderful wealth of information to the discussions and to help and support other participants. I, too, have been known to try to bring lots of sources to discussions (a la Dante). But I still buy into the philosophy/attitude Eman tried to lay down. (hide spoiler)]

This might motivate me to try reading it in the original OE. Is anyone else interested in reading along in this way?

Jon wrote: "This might motivate me to try reading it in the original OE. Is anyone else interested in reading along in this way?"

That depends on what you mean by reading it in Old English.

The simple answer, is: Not on a schedule like this, if you mean to work up the translation yourself.

I've done it before, and it was a slow process: I started work on it well ahead of the beginning of the formal class, and a good thing I did, as I just about managed to keep up with the pace.

For those who are not familiar with Old English: it can't be picked up the way you can with Chaucer, getting used to obsolete vocabulary, and from time to time unfamiliar grammar.* Old English is a whole lot more like German, and has to be learned, not assimilated. Drout's Quick and Easy Old English will speed things up, and get you reading some texts pretty quickly, but "Beowulf" has a lot of unusual (poetic) grammar and vocabulary that an introduction can't be expected to cover.

You can make some sense of it, maybe enough to appreciate the poetry, although without an idea of exactly how it works, with the aid of bilingual editions, which I've noted in the backgrounds and translations thread.

Of these, I think Chickering's Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition is the easiest to use, and I've been working with it recently, along with R.D. Fulk's The Beowulf Manuscript, which is based on the most recent full edition (Klaeber's Beowulf named after an important early 20th-century editor), but it takes a lot of liberties with OE word order so as to produce readable English prose. Michael Alexander's Penguin Beowulf: A Glossed Text with facing-page word-by-word English definitions, may baffle the beginner, who sometimes will be at a loss to connect words in their grammatical constructions with the dictionary-forms on the facing page.

These aren't outrageously expensive for scholarly books with limited market appeal, but they aren't cheap. There are some very cheap Kindle editions promising bilingual presentations, but they employ nineteenth-century texts and translations, and they don't bother about whether the translation was made from that text or not.... At least one of them uses William Morris' highly eccentric translation into what amounts to a new form of Middle English.

*There is another issue involved here. Years ago, at a UCLA conference on Old English literature which included some distinguished specialists, British and American, I heard the uncontested -- there, anyway -- claim that no one can learn to read Old English the way people can learn to read classical Latin and ancient Greek: there just isn't enough of it, and by the time you've reached that level of competence you've probably more or less painfully worked your way through pretty much all of it.

Coming very late to this thread, but will add that I was fortunate enough to study Old English at NYU with Jess Bessinger, a wonderfully engaging professor who was a Beowulf expert. Old English was like a foreign language class--in this case, if I recall correctly, pretty much solely for the purpose of being able to muddle our way through the original Beowulf, which would have been the last time I read it. I look forward to reading Seamus Heaney's translation this time around, but I do think fondly of Professor Bessinger gesticulating passionately at the front of the room. He made a dead language come to life.

https://www.amazon.com/Books-Jess-B-B...