Beowulf and other Old English poems

Resource Information

The work Beowulf and other Old English poems represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of San Diego Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

Beowulf and other Old English poems

Statement of responsibility

edited and translated by Craig Williamson ; with a foreword by Tom Shippey

Contributor

• Williamson, Craig, 1943-

Editor

• Williamson, Craig, 1943-

Translator

• Williamson, Craig, 1943-

Subject

• Beowulf
• Beowulf -- Translations into English
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Dragons
• Dragons -- Poetry
• Electronic books
• Epic poetry, English (Old)
• Epic poetry, English (Old) -- History and criticism
• Epic poetry, English (Old) -- Translations into English
• LITERARY COLLECTIONS -- Ancient & Classical
• Monsters
• Monsters -- Poetry
• Poetry
• Scandinavia
• Scandinavia -- Poetry
• Translations

Genre

• Poetry
• Translations
• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• Translations into English
• Electronic books

Language

• eng
• ang
• eng

Summary

Overview: The best-known literary achievement of Anglo-Saxon England, Beowulf is a poem concerned with monsters and heroes, treasure and transience, feuds and fidelity. Composed sometime between 500 and 1000 C.E. and surviving in a single manuscript, it is at once immediately accessible and forever mysterious. And in Craig Williamson's splendid new version, this often translated work may well have found its most compelling modern English interpreter. Williamson's Beowulf appears alongside his translations of many of the major works written by Anglo-Saxon poets, including the elegies "The Wanderer" and "The Seafarer," the heroic "Battle of Maldon," the visionary "Dream of the Rood," the mysterious and heart-breaking "Wulf and Eadwacer," and a generous sampling of the Exeter Book riddles. Accompanied by a foreword by noted medievalist Tom Shippey on Anglo-Saxon history, culture, and archaeology, and Williamson's introductions to the individual poems as well as his essay on translating Old English, the texts transport us back to the medieval scriptorium or ancient mead hall to share an exile's lament or herdsman's recounting of the story of the world's creation. From the riddling song of a bawdy onion that moves between kitchen and bedroom, to the thrilling account of Beowulf's battle with a treasure-hoarding dragon, the world becomes a place of rare wonder in Williamson's lines. Were his idiom not so modern, we might almost think the Anglo-Saxon poets had taken up the lyre again and begun to sing after a silence of a thousand years

Member of

• Middle Ages series

Cataloging source

CN8ML

Index

index present

Language note

In English

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

• dictionaries
• bibliography

Series statement

The Middle Ages Series