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J.R.R. Tolkien, Beowulf: Translation and Commentary, together with Sellic Spell. Ed. Christopher Tolkien. London: HarperCollins; Boston & New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014. Pp. xiv, 425. isbn: 9780-544-44278-8. £20/$28.
Just a year after the publication of The Fall of Arthur, Christopher Tolkien now brings out his father's translation of Beowulf, together with some short pieces. This first edition of a much awaited work is enlarged by a partial commentary on the poem taken from Tolkien's lecture notes which he used when teaching in Oxford. Until now, Tolkien has been chiefly remembered among Beowulf scholars for his famous 1936 British Academy lecture, 'Beowulf: the Monsters and the Critics.' He published only one other piece on the poem, his 'Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of Beowulf,' in Wrenn's 1940 edition of Clark Hall's translation (1911). Those remarks are essential reading in relation to the present volume; they explain the translator's taste for rhythmical prose based on natural speech patterns, but also for a somewhat archaic diction and grammar ( thou and thee, occasional use of verb endings in -eth, and inversion of word order as in 'Then about the tomb rode warriors valiant').
Tolkien was indeed qualified to comment...