There are other translations if you're looking for the courtly romance and knights." I'm as interested in contemporary idiom and slang as I am in the archaic. I dropped some fossils here, next to some newborns. "Language is a living thing," she writes in her introduction. It is Beowulf down to the line numbers, and tells the story of Beowulf and Hrothgar and Grendel and Grendel's mom and the dragon and Wiglaf and everything.Įxcept that Headley has made it modern, not in form or style or content, but in temperament. ![]() A remarkable thing that probably shouldn't even exist, except that it does. I don't care what you think of when you think of Beowulf in any of its hundreds of other translations because this - this - version, Headley's version, is an entirely different thing. No, I don't care if you loved it/hated it, if it traumatized you, if it ruined and/or energized the English language for you, or ruined you for translations or whatever. No, I don't care if you've read Beowulf (the original) before. The first thing I need to tell you is that you have to read it now. ![]() I have a lot of things to say about Maria Dahvana Headley's new book, Beowulf, and I'm gonna try to say them all right now.
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