Beowulf - 4 translations (Heaney, Rebsamen, Ringler, Tolkien)

BEOWULF is an Old English epic poem written by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet between the 8th and the early 11th century. Consisting of 3182 alliterative long lines and set in Scandinavia, it is the oldest surviving epic poem of Old English and the earliest vernacular English literature.

In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the aid of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall (in Heorot) has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is then also defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland in Sweden and later becomes king of the Geats. After a period of fifty years has passed, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is fatally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants bury him in a tumulus, a burial mound, in Geatland.

Of particular importance is Seamus Heaney's bilingual edition of the poem (referred to by Howell Chickering and many others as "Heaneywulf"). J. R. R. Tolkien's long-awaited translation and commentary (edited by his son Christopher) was published in May 2014.


The following books are a mixture of PDF or ePUB/MOBI formats:

* BEOWULF: A NEW VERSE TRANSLATION (Norton, 2000). Bilingual edition. Translated by Seamus Heaney. -- PDF

* BEOWULF: AN UPDATED VERSE TRANSLATION (HarperPerennial, 2004). Translated by Frederick Rebsamen. -- ePUB/MOBI

* BEOWULF: A NEW TRANSLATION FOR ORAL DELIVERY (Hackett, 2007). Translated by David Ringler. -- PDF

* BEOWULF: A TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY (HarperCollins, 2014). Translated by J.R.R. Tolkien; edited by Christopher Tolkien. -- ePUB/MOBI