List of adaptations of Beowulf

This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by adding missing items with reliable sources.

Beowulf is an Old English heroic epic poem of anonymous authorship. Its creation dates from between the 8th[1] and the 11th century, the only surviving manuscript dating from circa 1010.[2] At 3182 lines, it is notable for its length. It has risen to national epic status in England.[3]

Beowulf has been adapted many times in verse, in prose, on the stage, and in film. In 2003, the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies published Marijane Osborn's annotated list of over 300 translations and adaptations, withdrawn in 2019.[4] By 2020, the Beowulf's Afterlives Bibliographic Database listed some 688 translations and other versions of the poem, from Thorkelin's 1787 transcription of the text, and in languages including Afrikaans, Albanian, Arabic, Basque, Belarusian, Catalan, Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, French, Ganda, German, Greek, Gujarati, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latvian, Macedonian, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Serbo-Croat, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Turkish, Uighur, and Urdu.[5]

The poet John Dryden's categories of translation have influenced how scholars discuss variation between translations and adaptations.[6] In the Preface to Ovid's Epistles (1680) Dryden proposed three different types of translation:

metaphrase [...] or turning an author word for word, and line by line, from one language into another; paraphrase [...] or translation with latitude, where the author is kept in view by the translator so as never to be lost, but his words are not so strictly followed as his sense, and that, too, is admitted to be amplified but not altered; and imitation [...] where the translator – if he has not lost that name – assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words and sense, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion; and taking only some general hints from the original, to run division on the ground-work, as he pleases.[6]

The works listed below are novels and other works that take more "latitude" than pure "translations". Those are listed at List of translations of Beowulf.

  1. ^ Tolkien, J.R.R. (1958). Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics. London: Oxford University Press. p. 127.
  2. ^ Kiernan, Kevin S. (1997). Beowulf and the Beowulf Manuscript. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-08412-8.
  3. ^ The Question of genre in bylini and Beowulf by Shannon Meyerhoff, 2006 Archived 2007-11-17 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ^ Osborn, Marijane (2003). "Annotated List of Beowulf Translations". Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Archived from the original on 19 March 2018. Retrieved 29 November 2020.
  5. ^ "Beowulf's Afterlives Bibliographic Database". Beowulf's Afterlives Bibliographic Database. Retrieved 30 November 2020.
  6. ^ a b University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle (1680). "John Dryden, 'The Preface to Ovid's Epistles'". Theoretical Texts on Translation | Textes théoriques en traduction. doi:10.58079/uy1c. Retrieved 29 November 2020.