Synopses & Reviews
This new poetic translation brings the earliest extant English poem closer to the modern reader. Kennedy offers a translation in alliterative verse, based on Klaeber's text, of the Old English Beowulf, and provides a brief critical introduction which reviews literary and cultural discussions of the poem.
Synopsis
This unique poetic rendering, available for the first time in a paperback edition, brings the experience of this earliest extant English poem closer to the modern reader. It uses the four-beat alliterative measure without attempting to reproduce the conventional Old English half-line. Consonance and assonance have also been freely used to retain the stylistic feeling of the original while keeping the language readable and contemporary.