Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary

Beowulf:
A Translation and Commentary together with Sellic Spell

Front cover of the 2014 hardback edition
Editor	Christopher Tolkien
Author	Anonymous (Beowulf) J. R. R. Tolkien (Sellic Spell)
Translator	J. R. R. Tolkien
Cover artist	J. R. R. Tolkien
Language	English, Old English
Subject	Old English poetry
Genre	Epic poetry
Published	22 May 2014
Publisher	HarperCollins Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Publication place	United Kingdom
Pages	425 (Hardback)
ISBN	978-0-00-759006-3
OCLC	875629841
Preceded by	The Fall of Arthur
Followed by	The Story of Kullervo

Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary is a prose translation of the early medieval epic poem Beowulf from Old English to modern English. Translated by J. R. R. Tolkien from 1920 to 1926, it was edited by Tolkien's son Christopher and published posthumously in May 2014 by HarperCollins.

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 Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf kills 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 fifty years have 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. The translation is followed by a commentary on the poem that became the base for Tolkien's acclaimed 1936 lecture "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics".^[1] Furthermore, the book includes Tolkien's previously unpublished "Sellic Spell" and two versions of "The Lay of Beowulf".^[2] The translation was welcomed by scholars and critics, who however doubted that it would find much favour with the public or fans of Tolkien's fiction. Michael J. Alexander described it as close to the original in both meaning and clause-ordering, and like the original was intentionally archaic. Michael Drout, who had begun the task of editing Tolkien's Beowulf, was disappointed by the absence of Tolkien's alliterative verse translation of part of the poem. Others noted that the translation makes clear the indebtedness of The Lord of the Rings to Beowulf.