People seem to be forgetting that not only will we see Tolkien's translation, there will be a volume of "commentary". Though I don't know exactly what is included, that is the volume I am looking forward to seeing most of all. I doubt it will be a rehash of
The Monster and the Critics. I think it will be about the "how's and why's" Tolkien chose certain words in his translation and his take on the events in the poem. That will interest me more than the final translation.
This morning I forgot to include that the verse translation is only about 600 lines long. Tolkien apparently abandoned it. What we'll see is a complete
prose translation.
--Imladrien
here
Quote:
Tolkien's Beowulf Still Available
The New York Sun followed up on confusion over reports of the "supposed discovery" of J.R.R. Tolkien's Beowulf translation by talking to the source, Wheaton professor Michael Drout, with interesting results. Most importantly for Lunch readers, Drout says that the Tolkien estate does not have a publisher lined up yet. Drout doesn't expect to have his work completed until this summer, so contrary to earlier stories, "There's almost no way this will be a 2003 publication." He and the estate are proposing the project as two books, with the prose translation and Tolkien's line-by-line comments in separate volumes. And Drout indicates the translation was long known to be among the Tolkien papers; it's the Tolkien essay lecture Beowulf and the Critics that he discovered in the collection.
|
[ February 26, 2003: Message edited by: Imladrien ]