Winner of the Whitbread Prize, Seamus Heaney’s translation "accomplishes what before now had seemed impossible: a faithful rendering that is simultaneously an original and gripping poem in its own right" (New York Times Book Review). The translation that "rides boldly through the reefs of scholarship" (The Observer) is combined with first-rate annotation. No reading knowledge of Old English is assumed.Heaney’s clear and insightful introduction to Beowulf provides students with an understanding of both the poem’s history in the canon and Heaney’s own translation process.

Listen to Seamus Heaney reading 600 lines from his translation of Beowulf at the Norton Online Archive.

List of Illustrations

Preface

Acknowledgments

Old English Language and Poetics

Translator's Introduction

The Text of Beowulf

Contexts

Bruce Mitchell and Fred C. Robinson·The Beowulf Manuscript

Genesis 4.1-16 Cain and Abel

Hall-Feasts and the Queen

Grettir the Strong and the Trollwoman

The Frisian Slaughter: Episode and Fragment

Mcuin·"What has Ingeld to do with Christ?"

Gregory of Tours·History of the Franks

　[Hygelac's Raid into Frisia]

William of Malmesbury·[Genealogy of the Royal Family of Wessex]

On the Wars between the Swedes and the Geats

Genealogies of the Royal Families in Beowulf

The Kingdoms and Tribes of Beowulf

MAP: The Scandinavian Setting of Beowulf

R. D. Fulk and Joseph Harris·Beowulf's Name

Criticism

J. R. R. Tolkien·Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics

John Leyerle·The Interlace Structure of Beowulf

Jane Chance·The Structural Unity of Beowulf: The Problem of Grendel's Mother

Roberta Frank·The Beowulf Poet's Sense of History

Fred C. Robinson·The Tomb of Beowulf