This text includes a fewcharacters that require utf-8 (unicode) file encoding.
œ (“oe” ligature)
ā ē ī ō ū ȳ ǣ (vowels with macron or “long” mark)
ǽ (æ with accent)
ȝ (yogh)
þ̷ þ̸ (thorn with line, typically abbreviating “that”)
Most of these letters are rare and occur only in the quotations fromOld English. If any of them do not display properly—in particular,if the diacritic does not appear directly above the letter—or ifthe apostrophes and quotation marks in this paragraph appear as garbage,you may have an incompatible browser or unavailable fonts. First, makesure that the browser’s “character set” or “file encoding” is set toUnicode (UTF-8). You may also need to change your browser’s defaultfont.
Typographical errors are shown in the text with mouse-hover popups. Thetranslations of Ettmüller, Simrock, Heyne and Simons were checkedagainst the original texts. In German texts, the word or word element“wohl” is consistently spelled “wol”. All asterisks are in theoriginal.
The following pages are designed togive a historical and critical account of all that has been done in theway of translating Beowulf from the earliest attempts of SharonTurner in 1805 down to the present time. As a corollary to this, itpresents a history of the text of the poem to the time of thepublication of Grein’s Bibliothek der angelsächsischen Poesie in1859; for until the publication of this work every editor of the poemwas also its translator.
It is hoped that the essay may prove useful as a contribution tobibliography, and serve as a convenient reference book for those insearch of information regarding the value of texts and translations ofBeowulf.
The method of treating the various books is, in general, the same.I have tried to give in each case an accurate bibliographicaldescription of the volume, a notion of the value of the text usedin making it, &c. But the emphasis given to these topics hasnecessarily varied from time to time. In discussing literaltranslations, for example, much attention has been paid to the value ofthe text, while little or nothing is said of the value of the renderingas literature. On the other hand, in the case of a book which isliterary in aim, the attention paid to the critical value of the book iscomparatively small. At certain periods in the history of the poem, thechief value of a translation is its utility as a part of the criticalapparatus for the4interpretation of the poem; at other periods, a translation laysclaim to our attention chiefly as imparting the literary features of theoriginal.
In speaking of the translations which we may call literary,I have naturally paid most attention to the English versions, andthis for several reasons. In the first place, Beowulf is anEnglish poem; secondly, the number, variety, and importance ofthe English translations warrant this emphasis; thirdly, the presentwriter is unable to discuss in detail the literary and metrical value oftranslations in foreign ton