“Language and values and concepts come packaged together, don't they?” asks Peter Ramey, recent translator of The Word-Hoard Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary. Indeed, his opus reflects just this and resolves the distance between culture and language in a uniquely faithful yet readable translation.
Join Peter and Ryan as they delve into Beowulf, asking: What is the value of a word? Who was Beowulf? Is Beowulf pre-Christian, Christian by overlay, Christian by accident, or Christian in essence?
2:44 - Peter Ramey’s translation of Beowulf carries over key words of the Old English while also creating words when appropriate.
6:37 - The identity of Anglo-Saxon oral tradition continued even after Christianity’s advent in the seventh century.
12:30 - The fact that Beowulf appears as a hero in diverse poems and contexts clarifies the thesis that Beowulf was indeed an oral, traditional story.
14:15 - Old English poetry interlaces inset stories, repeating formulas and varying words with alliteration.
20:58 - While Seamus Haney provides a modern translation that speaks mid-20th century scholarship into his translation of Beowulf, and William Morris’s translation preserves so much of the Old English that it is faithful but incomprehensible to non-Old English speakers, Peter Ramey’s translation both draws on etymology and retains actual Old English diction in a readable manner.
31:42 - “There's elements of goodness in this tradition. And this tradition is us, this is our identity, these are our names, these are our lineages, these are our people, these are our stories. We don't have to cut it all away. We can keep it. And here's a path forward, and it's called Beowulf.”
40:15 - The inset stories in Beowulf could theoretically serve to “baptize” the oral tradition into Christianity.
42:44 - Alcuin argues that, while Beowulf is not a perfect Christian story, it is possible and edifying to detect in it allegorical signifiers to the Gospel.
43:35 - Pre-Christian people had an uncannily correct concept of hell.
49:40 - The death of Beowulf opens the way for a “a more modern, in this context, Christian,” understanding of sacrifice, weakness and leadership.
56:33 - Tolkien saw a model in Beowulf’s heroic stories and was influenced by the Beowulf poet’s Old English terms, like Ent, which are scattered throughout Lord of the Rings.