Pixelated hero:
re-creations of Beowulf
Beowulf
3182 lines
‘England’s national epic’
Scandinavian setting
Pagan-Christian
Beowulf vs monsters
A history of Beowulf
~700-800 AD: composition
~1000: manuscript
1805: Sharon Turner inaccurately translates several lines into English
1815: Thorkelin’s complete translation ... into Latin, compared to the Aeneid
1820: Grundtvig’s complete translation into Danish: a ‘simple little Homer’
1826: Conybeare’s Miltonic translation
1840: Ettmuller’s complete translation into German
1855: Thorpe’s error-riddled English translation
1901: Clark Hall’s prose translation
1925: Howard Hanson’s symphonic ‘Lament for Beowulf’
1931: Kuriyagawa’s Japanese translation, in the form of a Biwa romance
1940: Wrenn’s revised edition of Clark Hall, with preface by Tolkien
1941: Basari’s Italian comic strip (‘cineepopeia’) based on Beowulf
1954: The Lord of the Rings
1966: Talbot Donaldson’s prose translation
A history of Beowulf
1971: Gardner’s Grendel describes a sympathetic monster
1973: Alexander’s Penguin-published translation
1974: Wylie’s Beowulf rock musical
1975: Beowulf Dragon Slayer (comic)
1976: Crichton’s Eaters of the Dead
1981: Grendel Grendel Grendel (animated film)
1999: The 13th Warrior (film)
1999: Beowulf (film)
1999: Heaney’s Anglo-Irish translation
2002: Beowulf on Steorarume (www.heorot.dk)
2005: Beowulf & Grendel (film)
2005: Beowulf (comic)
2006: Grendel (opera)
2006: Grendel’s Cave (game)
2007: Beowulf (film, game)
Background theory
The death of the author
‘... a text’s unity lies not in its origin
but its destination.’ (Barthes 1977, p. 148)
‘... the historicity of texts and the textuality of history ...’
‘... we can have no access to a full and authentic past,
a lived material existence, unmediated by the surviving
textual traces of the society in question.’ (Montrose 1998, p. 781)
Creation and re-creation
‘The beauty of the past
is that it is never the same thing twice.’ (Niles 1997, p. 222)
‘... the notion of re ... creation as an ongoing transformation
of past-through-present-to-future ...’ (Pope 2005, pp. 86-7)
Translation as transformation
‘naéfre ic máran geseah
eorla ofer eorþan
ðonne is éower sum,
secg on searwum·
nis þæt seldguma
waépnum geweorðad·
næfne him his wlite léoge,
aénlic ansýn!
Nú ic éower sceal
frumcyn witan
aér gé fyr heonan
léasscéaweras
on land Dena
furþur féran·
Nú gé feorbúend
merelíðende
mínne gehýrað
ánfealdne geþóht:
ofost is sélest
tó gecýðanne
hwanan éowre cyme syndon.’
‘I have not in my life
set eyes on a man with more might in his frame
than this helmed lord. He’s no hall-fellow
dressed in fine armour, or his face belies him;
he has the head of a hero.
I’ll have your names now
and the names of your fathers; or further you shall not go
as undeclared spies in the Danish land.
Stay where you are, strangers, hear
what I have to say! Seas crossed,
it is best and simplest straightaway to acknowledge
where you are from, why you have come.’
(Alexander 1973)
Translation as transformation
‘And sure, methinks, mine eyes ne’er yet beheld
A chief of nobler port than him that leads you;
No stranger (if his bright and beauteous aspect
Belies him not) to the proud garb of war,
Nor in its toil unhonour’d. Speak ye then,
Ere yet your further march explore our realm,
Or friend or foe, your names and kindred speak.
Hear, ye far-faring tenants of the wave,
My full and clear demand – soonest were best
To give me answer – whence and what ye are.’
(Conybeare 1826)
‘Nor have I seen
a mightier man-at-arms on this earth
than the one standing here: unless I am mistaken,
he is truly noble. This is no mere
hanger-on in a hero’s armour.
So now, before you fare inland
as interlopers, I have to be informed
about who you are and where you hail from.
Outsiders from across the water,
I say it again: the sooner you tell
where you come from and why, the better.’
(Heaney 1999)
Books
Films
IMDB: 3.5/10
‘A Truly Bizarre Film’
IMDB: 6.0/10
‘Beowulf meets Die Hard’
Films
Ray Winstone
Anthony Hopkins
Crispin Glover
Brendan Gleeson
John Malkovich
Angelina Jolie
‘I sense a flop!’
Comics
Games
Opera
Tolkien
Tolkien
There sat many men in bright mail, who sprang at once to their feet and
barred the way with spears. ‘Stay, strangers here unknown!’ they cried in
the tongue of the Riddermark, demanding the names and errand of the
strangers. Wonder was in their eyes but little friendliness; and they looked
darkly upon Gandalf.
[...]
‘Never have we seen other riders so strange, nor any horse more proud
than is one of these that bear you. He is one of the Mearas, unless our eyes
are cheated by some spell. Say, are you not a wizard, some spy from Saruman,
or phantoms of his craft? Speak now and be swift!’
(The Lord of the Rings, p. 497)
Théoden = þēoden, prince, king
ent = ent, giant
orc = orcnēas, monsters
Meduseld = meduseld, mead-hall
Éomer = Ēomer
Orthanc = orþanc, intelligence, cleverness, mechanical art
elf = ælf, ylfe, ‘elf’, fairy, goblin, incubus
hobbit = *hol-bytla, hole-dweller
Beowulf & Grendel
2005
Iceland/Canada/UK
Anti-epic
A sympathetic Grendel
Reception
800 AD
1800
2006
Reception
?
800 AD
1800
2006
Reception
?
800 AD
1800
2006
Reception
?
800 AD
1800
2006
The palimpsest
Bibliography
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Augustyn, B 2005, Beowulf: gods and monsters, Speakeasy Comics, Toronto
Barthes, R 1977, 'The death of the author', in Image, music, text, Fontana Press, London, pp. 142-148
Beowulf & Grendel 2005, Canada/Iceland/UK,
Frantzen, AJ 1990, Desire for origins: new language, Old English, and teaching the tradition, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick
Frantzen, AJ 2006, '"Hrothgar built roads": Grendel's ride in LA', Old English Newslettter, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 27-35
Fulk, R & Cain, CM 2005, A history of Old English literature, Blackwell Publishing, Malden
Games Foundation 2006, Beowulf - the video game, viewed 18 October 2006, <http://www.gamesfoundation.com/beowulf/index.html>
Gardner, J 1989, Grendel, Random House, New York
Greenblatt, SJ 1990, Learning to curse: essays in early modern culture, Routledge, New York
Heaney, S 2000, Beowulf, Faber and Faber, London
Howe, N 1997, 'Historicist approaches', in Reading Old English texts, ed K O'Brien O'Keefe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 79-100
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State University of New York Press, Albany, pp. 181-210
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contemporary theory in medieval studies, ed AJ Frantzen, State University of New York Press, Albany, pp. 157-180
Liuzza, RM 2000, Beowulf: a new verse translation, Broadview Press, Peterborough, Ontario
Montrose, L 1998, 'Professing the Renaissance: the poetics and politics of culture', in Literary theory: an anthology, revised edition, eds J Rivkin &
M Ryan, Blackwell Publishers, Malden, pp. 777-785
Niles, JD 1997a, 'Appropriations: a concept of culture', in Anglo-Saxonism and the construction of social identity, eds AJ Frantzen & JD Niles, University Press of Florida, Gainesville, pp. 202-228
Niles, JD 1997b, 'Introduction: Beowulf, truth, meaning', in A Beowulf handbook, eds RE Bjork & JD Niles, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, pp. 1-12
O'Brien O'Keefe, K 1997, 'Introduction', in Reading Old English texts, ed K O'Brien O'Keefe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 1-19
Osborn, M 1997, 'Translations, versions, illustrations', in A Beowulf handbook, eds RE Bjork & JD Niles, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, pp. 341-372
Pasternack, CB 1997, 'Post-structuralist theories: the subject and the text', in Reading Old English texts, ed K O'Brien O'Keefe, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 170-191
Paramount Pictures 2006, Beowulf - official movie site: Beowulf movie, viewed 18 October 2006, <http://www.beowulfmovie.com/>
Pope, R 2005, Creativity: theory, history, practice, Routledge, Abingdon
Pope, R 2002, The English studies book: an introduction to language, literature and culture, 2nd edition, Routledge, London
Shippey, T 2003, The road to Middle-Earth: how J.R.R. Tolkien created a new mythology, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York
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Tolkien, JRR 1997, 'Beowulf: the monsters and the critics', in The monsters and the critics and other essays, ed C Tolkien, HarperCollins Publishers, London, pp. 5-48
Tolkien, JRR 2001, The Lord of the Rings, 2nd (film tie-in) edition, HarperCollins Publishers, London