[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

Squatter, I agree with you about Professor Clarke’s apparent off-hand remark. I doubt if he really put that much thought into that statement, and journalists and article writers love those statements, more so than the learned ones.

I'm all too aware of that, Bill; and it surprises me that someone of Professor Clarke's standing didn't take that into account and weigh his words a little more carefully. One must first make a careless and off-hand remark for it to be quoted, and to address such a comment to a journalist seems to me the height of folly.

I agree with you that the positions of the two critics, Tolkien and Clarke, can be reconciled with ease, which makes me wonder why Clarke seems so vehemently opposed to the earlier scholar's point of view. By comparison, Seamus Heaney is very complimentary of Tolkien in his introduction to his own translation:

However, when it comes to considering Beowulf as a work of literature, one publication stands out. In 1936, the Oxford scholar and teacher J.R.R. Tolkien published an epoch-making paper entitled 'Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics', which took for granted the poem's integrity and distinction as a work of art and proceeded to show in what this integrity and distinction inhered ... Tolkien's brilliant literary treatment changed the way the poem was valued and initiated a new era - and new terms - of appreciation.

I see no reason to disagree with the winner of the 1995 Nobel prize for literature.

I don't know how the rest of Tolkien's Beowulf compares with the piece that Bethberry quoted, but I needed no help with my understanding of that example, and my own education has been nothing if not average. I would regard an annotation of it as an insult to my intelligence.