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Beowulf

Beowulf is the earliest extant poem in a modern European language-- reflecting a feudal, newly Christian world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory, life and death. Its beauty, power, and artistry have kept it alive for more than thirteen centuries.

Beowulf: And Related Readings (Literature Connections)

Beowulf, and Related Readings

Beowulf

Beowulf is the earliest extant poem in a modern European language reflecting a feudal, newly Christian world of heroes and monsters, blood and victory, life and death. Its beauty, power, and artistry have kept it alive for more than thirteen centuries.

Beowulf: A Ladybird Expert Book (The Ladybird Expert Series #26)

Part of the ALL-NEW LADYBIRD EXPERT SERIES'This accessible illustrated guide is a great introduction to the story, its origins and its enduring legacy' BBC HISTORY- Which is more terrifying - a monster or its mother? - Why did Berserkers run naked into battle? - How was the story of Beowulf almost lost forever?PLUNGE into the adventures of Beowulf, the 6th Century hero who defeated the monster Grendel, became king of his people, and slayed a tremendous dragon. Surviving in a single, burnt manuscript, Beowulf continues to entrance readers and inspire major works of fantasy today.WARRIORS. MONSTERS. DRAGONS. GOLD.Janina Ramirez's Beowulf is an accessible and authoritative guide to the spellbinding world and daring feats of a poem remembered through the centuries.

Beowulf: A New Translation for Oral Delivery

Dick Ringler's deceptively simple translation captures the rhythm, movement, and power of the original Old English poem while employing a fluid modern English style and a relatively spare vocabulary. His generous Introduction, a lively yet masterly guide to the work, along with his translations of three shorter Old English poems elucidate a major English text almost as well-known for its subtlety and intricacy as it is for its monsters and heroes.

Beowulf: A Translation And Commentary

The translation of Beowulf by J.R.R. Tolkien was an early work, very distinctive in its mode, completed in 1926: he returned to it later to make hasty corrections, but seems never to have considered its publication. This edition is twofold, for there exists an illuminating commentary on the text of the poem by the translator himself, in the written form of a series of lectures given at Oxford in the 1930s; and from these lectures a substantial selection has been made, to form also a commentary on the translation in this book. From his creative attention to detail in these lectures there arises a sense of the immediacy and clarity of his vision. It is as if he entered into the imagined past: standing beside Beowulf and his men shaking out their mail-shirts as they beached their ship on the coast of Denmark, listening to the rising anger of Beowulf at the taunting of Unferth, or looking up in amazement at Grendel's terrible hand set under the roof of Heorot. But the commentary in this book includes also much from those lectures in which, while always anchored in the text, he expressed his wider perceptions. He looks closely at the dragon that would slay Beowulf "snuffling in baffled rage and injured greed when he discovers the theft of the cup"; but he rebuts the notion that this is "a mere treasure story", "just another dragon tale". He turns to the lines that tell of the burying of the golden things long ago, and observes that it is "the feeling for the treasure itself, this sad history" that raises it to another level. "The whole thing is sombre, tragic, sinister, curiously real. The 'treasure' is not just some lucky wealth that will enable the finder to have a good time, or marry the princess. It is laden with history, leading back into the dark heathen ages beyond the memory of song, but not beyond the reach of imagination." Sellic spell, a "marvellous tale", is a story written by Tolkien suggesting what might have been the form and style of an Old English folk-tale of Beowulf, in which there was no association with the "historical legends" of the Northern kingdoms.

Beowulf

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland. Through its blend of myth and history, Beowulf vividly evokes a twilight world in which men and supernatural forces live side by side. And it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit in a transient world."Alexander's translation is marked by a conviction that it is possible to be both ambitious and faithful [and] ...communicates the poem with a care which goes beyond fidelity-to-meaning and reaches fidelity of implication. May it go on ... to another half-million copies." - Tom Shippey, Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English

Beowulf: A Prose Translation

The greatest surviving Old English poem rendered into modern prose Beowulf stands at the head of English literature; a poem of historical interest and epic scope. Although the first manuscript of Beowulf dates from around the year 1000 CE, it is thought that the poem existed in its present form from the year 850. Beowulf's adventures themselves stand in front of the wide historical canvas of 5th and 6th century Scandinavia. Against this heroic background of feuding and feasting, Beowulf first kills the monster Grendel and her mother, and later defends his people against a dragon in a battle that leaves them both mortally wounded. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Beowulf (Bilingual Edition)

New York Times bestseller and winner of the Whitbread Award. Composed toward the end of the first millennium, Beowulf is the elegiac narrative of the adventures of Beowulf, a Scandinavian hero who saves the Danes from the seemingly invincible monster Grendel and, later, from Grendel's mother. He then returns to his own country and dies in old age in a vivid fight against a dragon. The poem is about encountering the monstrous, defeating it, and then having to live on in the exhausted aftermath. In the contours of this story, at once remote and uncannily familiar at the beginning of the twenty-first century, Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney finds a resonance that summons power to the poetry from deep beneath its surface. Drawn to what he has called the "four-squareness of the utterance" in ?Beowulf? and its immense emotional credibility, Heaney gives these epic qualities new and convincing reality for the contemporary reader.

Beowulf: A New Translation

Named one of the Best Poetry Books of 2021 by The GuardianLonglisted for the 2021 National Translation Award in Poetry. Picked for Kirkus Reviews’ Best Fiction in Translation of 2020. Named a Book of the Year by NPR, Vox, and The New Statesman. Picked for Loyalty Books’ Holiday List. A new, feminist translation of Beowulf by the author of the much-buzzed-about novel The Mere Wife"Brash and belligerent, lunatic and invigorating, with passages of sublime poetry punctuated by obscenities and social-media shorthand." —Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker"The author of the crazy-cool Beowulf-inspired novel The Mere Wife tackles the Old English epic poem with a fierce new feminist translation that radically recontextualizes the tale." —Barbara VanDenburgh, USA TodayNearly twenty years after Seamus Heaney’s translation of Beowulf—and fifty years after the translation that continues to torment high-school students around the world—there is a radical new verse translation of the epic poem by Maria Dahvana Headley, which brings to light elements that have never before been translated into English, recontextualizing the binary narrative of monsters and heroes into a tale in which the two categories often entwine, justice is rarely served, and dragons live among us. A man seeks to prove himself as a hero. A monster seeks silence in his territory. A warrior seeks to avenge her murdered son. A dragon ends it all. The familiar elements of the epic poem are seen with a novelist’s eye toward gender, genre, and history—Beowulf has always been a tale of entitlement and encroachment, powerful men seeking to become more powerful, and one woman seeking justice for her child, but this version brings new context to an old story. While crafting her contemporary adaptation of Beowulf, Headley unearthed significant shifts lost over centuries of translation.

The Beowulf Trilogy

Read an updated translation of the classic English epic poem, and discover what happens next in the two exciting sequels, all collected here in one edition. About one and a half millennia ago, an anonymous author gave the world Beowulf, the first great epic written in what would become the English language. The poem follows the adventures of Beowulf, hero of the Geats, as he battles the monstrous Grendel, Grendel&’s fearsome mother, and a deadly dragon. After the hero meets his death, readers are left with the question: What will happen now? Without their champion, hero, and king, the Geats are defenseless against their enemies. With The Beowulf Trilogy, author Christopher L. Webber shares his own translation of the original epic and also answers the question of what happens next with two epic poems of his own. In Beyond Beowulf, follow the Geats as they welcome a new leader, Wiglaf, the young warrior who aided Beowulf in his encounter with the dragon. He helps the tribe search or a new home while contending with threats from storms, trolls, and the Saxon army. Then, in Yrfa&’s Tale, Webber looks beyond the warrior&’s viewpoint to give a perspective from Wiglaf&’s wife and family, and the emotional toll of their struggle. In The Beowulf Trilogy, Webber gives readers a complete picture of Beowulf&’s world, a somber and magical land full of adventure and turmoil. Praise for The Beowulf Trilogy&“[Webber&’s] translation&’s clean, musical lines are excellent for reading aloud. The two sequels also maintain the original&’s language and narrative style. . . . Succeeds in both respecting and enriching the venerable original.&” —Kirkus Reviews

The Berenstain Bears Bears on Wheels (I Can Read!)

As the gradually increasing number of bears on wheels adds up through all kinds of combinations and permutations, beginning readers are offered a unique counting book, courtesy of the Berenstains.

The Berenstain Bears' Family Get Together (I Can Read!)

The Berenstain Bears Learn to Share

"It's lots of fun to play with me. I ask my dolls to come to tea."

The Berenstain Bears Ride the Thunderbolt (Step into Reading)

Climb in and hold on tight! Kids will love spending a day at the Bear Country Amusement Park, where they'll experience the stomach-dropping, heart-stopping thrills of a giant roller coaster right along with the Berenstain Bears.

Berlin-Hamlet

Before his tragic death, Szilárd Borbély had gained a name as one of Europe's most searching new poets. Berlin-Hamlet--one of his major works--evokes a stroll through the phantasmagoric shopping arcades described in Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, but instead of the delirious image fragments of nineteenth-century European culture, we pass by disembodied scraps of written text, remnants as ghostly as their authors: primarily Franz Kafka but also Benjamin himself or the Hungarian poets Attila József or Erno Szép. Paraphrases and reworked quotations, drawing upon the vanished prewar legacy, particularly its German Jewish aspects, appear in sharp juxtaposition with images of post-1989 Berlin frantically rebuilding itself in the wake of German reunification.

The Berlin Wall Cafe

This was the collection with which Durcan broke through to the huge and appreciative audience he enjoys today. In the first part are poems of great satirical comedy and also of great passion and indignation, and in the second part, poems about the break-up of a marriage so intense they would hurt if they weren't also possessed of the healing gifts of truthfulness and humour. In The Berlin Wall Café Durcan has located that space between the walls and barriers societies and individuals erect - a no-man's-land of the free imagination where we meet as the vulnerable and comical human beings we are. It contains some of his very best work.

Bernard Shaw on Literature: On Literature (The Critical Shaw)

A collection of literary criticism from the Nobel Prize–winning playwright behind such classics as Saint Joan and Pygmalion.The Critical Shaw: On Literature is a comprehensive selection of renowned Irish playwright and Nobel Laureate Bernard Shaw&’s ideas and opinions on a wide range of literary forms of expression, from Shakespearean drama to ghost stories, from naturalist novels to philosophical essays. Shaw meticulously applied his comprehensive knowledge of the intricacies of writing and publishing (composition, typesetting, style, themes, censorship) and in the process produced an extensive array of critical works spanning more than fifty years. Always with an axe to grind—whether aesthetic, ethical, or otherwise—Shaw tested the boundaries of satire in his critical essays, occasionally locking horns as a result with some of the most prominent authors of his lifetime. Displaying wit and wisdom in equal proportions, some of his reviews remain fresh even though the authors and books they appraised have long since fallen into oblivion. Shaw&’s views about literature challenged established conventions of the canon and helped to shape a renewed collective concept of literature.The Critical Shaw series brings together, in five volumes and from a wide range of sources, selections from Bernard Shaw&’s voluminous writings on topics that exercised him for the whole of his professional career: Literature, Music, Politics, Religion, and Theater. The volumes are edited by leading Shaw scholars, and all include an introduction, a chronology of Shaw&’s life and works, annotated texts, and a bibliography. The series editor is L.W. Conolly, literary adviser to the Shaw Estate and former president of the International Shaw Society.

Besar la lona

Un brillante golpe de efecto en formato poema, un canto a los perdedores, a los actores secundarios, a los vencidos...Porque también hay épica en la derrota. A un lado del cuadrilátero, con calzón azul y casi 6000 trillones de toneladas, el mundo. Y al otro lado estás tú.Se intuye un combate desigual.Y es cierto: vas a acabar besando la lona. Pero quizás después de leer este libro lo puedas ver con mis ojos:Besar la lona no es caer, es darle las gracias al suelo. Antonio Carreño reivindica a través de una escritura brillante y de golpe de efecto la importancia del segundo plano, la épica de la derrota, la grandeza de los actores secundarios y de los perdedores. Porque aprender a volar exige muchas horas de suelo. Críticas:«He de reconocer que, a estas alturas de la representación, creía impensable que ningún meteorito poético hiciera impacto en mí, pero el cabrón de Antonio lo ha conseguido. En el centro del pecho. Touché (...) Tras deglutir hipnotizado la lengua de Antonio, tengo la sensación de que Carreño estaba ahí desde el primer momento, justo a mi lado, los dos a la sombra del triunvirato vencedor, pero que, paradójica e inexplicablemente, nunca habíamos enfrentado nuestras miradas».Del prólogo de Kutxi Romero

Besaydoo: Poems (Jake Adam York Prize Ser.)

Selected by Amaud Jamaul Johnson for the 2023 Jake Adam York Prize, Yalie Saweda Kamara’s Besaydoo is an elegantly wrought love song to home—as place, as people, as body, and as language. A griot is a historian, a living repository of communal legacies with “a story pulsing in every blood cell.” In Besaydoo, Kamara serves as griot for the Freeborn in Oakland, the Sierra Leonean in California, the girl straddling womanhood, the woman re-discovering herself. “I am made from the obsession of detail,” she writes, setting scenes from her own multifaceted legacy in sharp relief: the memory of her mother’s singing, savory stacks of lumpia, a church where “everyone is broken, but trying.” A multitudinous witness. Kamara psalms from the nexus of many languages—Krio, English, French, poetry’s many dialects—to highlight mechanisms not just for survival, but for abundance. “I make myth for peace,” she writes, as well as for loss, for delight, for kinship, and most of all for a country where Black means “steadfast and opulent,” and “dangerous and infinite.” She writes for a new America, where praise is plentiful and Black lives flourish. But in Besaydoo, there is no partition between the living and the dead. There is no past nor present. There is, instead, a joyful simultaneity—a liberating togetherness sustained by song.

Beside the Bard: Scottish Lowland Poetry in the Age of Burns (Transits: Literature, Thought & Culture 1650-1850)

Beside the Bard argues that Scottish poetry in the age of Burns reclaims not a single past, dominated and overwritten by the unitary national language of an elite ruling class, but a past that conceptualizes the Scottish nation in terms of local self-identification, linguistic multiplicity, cultural and religious difference, and transnational political and cultural affiliations. This fluid conception of the nation may accommodate a post-Union British self-identification, but it also recognizes the instrumental and historically contingent nature of “Britishness.” Whether male or female, loyalist or radical, literati or autodidacts, poets such as Alexander Wilson, Carolina Olyphant, Robert Tannahill, and John Lapraik, among others, adamantly refuse to imagine a single nation, British or otherwise, instead preferring an open, polyvocal field, on which they can stage new national and personal formations and fight new revolutions. In this sense, “Scotland” is a revolutionary category, always subject to creative destruction and reformation. Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2008

This brilliant collection highlights a bold mix of fiction, nonfiction, screenplays, television writing, and more alternative comics than ever. Compiled by Dave Eggers and students from his San Francisco writing center, contributors include Judy Budnitz, "The Onion, The Daily Show, This American Life," and George Packer.

The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2009

A selection of the best writing, including fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and comics, published in American periodicals during 2008, aimed at readers 15 and up.

The Best American Poetry 1989

An installment of a yearly anthology of poems.

The Best American Poetry 1990

An installment of a yearly anthology of poems.