[Eric_WVGG]

This New Yorker feature got me interested in this book, provides a few colorful excerpts. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/a-beowulf-for-...

Although contemporary styling is often comical and overwrought, maybe drawing a little too much attention to itself, keep in mind that the original authors and audiences were not dusty elbow-patched-tweed college professors. This was raucous and rowdy stuff, more akin to a dumb action movie than philosophy.

[wolverine876]

> the original authors and audiences were not dusty elbow-patched-tweed college professors. This was raucous and rowdy stuff, more akin to a dumb action movie than philosophy.

Where can I find out more about that depiction of Beowulf? The post linked above, by the author of the new translation, quotes JRR Tolkien (possibly the leading scholar of Old English in the 20th century) saying,

“If you wish to translate, not re-write, Beowulf,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote in 1940, “your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day the poem was made.”

I don't begrudge Maria Dahvana Headley doing her own interpretation of the story, but that doesn't change the original.

[sanxiyn]

Eh no. It is generally agreed the language of Beowulf was already archaic when it was written down. Tolkien argues this point strongly in On Translating Beowulf.

[tephra]

Remember that it was most likely (if we are to go with professor Tolkien) created 200-300 years before the manuscript that survives was created.