Book review- Beowulf: An illustrated edition

Hi, this is my first book review on this blog. The book I am going to review is called: Beowulf-an illustrated edition translated by Seamus Heaney. The ISBN number is: 978039330106.

Book rating: 5/5 (Excellent)
Offensiveness: 0/5 (not offensive at all)

In 2007, director Robert Zemeckis relased his version of "Beowulf" in the form of an animated movie. The movie was visually spectacular with its use of 3D technology (I will review this movie at some later stage when I have time). It was a blockbuster, however many critics heavily critizied the film and accused the film for deviating storyline from the original Beowulf story.

Here I am going to say, if you have watched the movie and thought it was bad, I agree 100% with you. However, on the other hand, if you have never read Beowulf, then I would say it's time to pick up a copy of the translation of Beowulf.

Beowulf, is one of the oldest surviving heoric epic poem written in old English. The scholars have estimated that the poem was probably composed somewhere between the 7th century to the end of the 10th century. In a language that is known as "Anglo-Saxon" or "Old English". Apparently this 3000+ line epic poem was often sung by bards at travellers' joints in ancient times, and when sung in its original language, it is full of rhymes and is melodic. However,
now days unless you are some Old English scholar, the chances are that you will be reading a translated version. The problem is, according to Howell D. Chickering, JR. a professor at language and literature at Amherst College, he said no matter how well the modern day translation might be, can never make all or most of its poetry come across, and a lot of its richness and meaning are lost in the translation.

So what is so great about Beowulf? Besides its historical and literal values, Beowulf has an awesome story! In the Beowulf story, not only is Beowulf a hero with the strength of 30men, but he is also an honourable character who is God fearing, and God praising. Many have specluated that Beowulf was composed by a Christian monk in the 8th century. So how good is this? The earliest fantasy fiction story in history turns out to be something that was aimed to glorified God! Also the story of Beowulf is pretty epic, and action packed with thrilling moments. I mean, Beowulf fights a troll in the beginning, then fights and decapitated a sea hag, which was the troll's mother, and finally fought, killed but died in an epic battle against a fire breathing dragon. How epic is that! Another interesting thing is that by reading Beowulf, you can get an insight into the early Christian culture amongst the Danes and the Swedes in those ancient times. Furthermore, I can only guess that many fantasy novels we have today all have elements of Beowulf in them, almost like a DNA for all fantasy novels. For example, J.R.R. Tolkien probably used a few elements in Beowulf besides themes from the Norse and Icelandic saga.

Since you can only buy translated Beowulf from bookstores, which one is the best? Well, personally I own three different translations:

1) Burton Raffel's translation - this is almost like the prose translation, very readable and easy to understand, but the degree of poetry in translation is.. well minimal.

2) Howell, D. Chickering, JR. version, this is a dual language edition book, where he presented the original Anglo Saxon language versus his line by line translation. Some have claimed that this is the best translation you can get compared to the original. However, I found the translation a bit hard to read through, only recommended to die hard fans of Beowulf.

3) The Seamus Heaney's version, which is the version I am reviewing here. This book has beautifu illustrations, often photos on artifacts or antiques from the era. The papers used in the book are of very high quality. The translation is readable, yet retains most of the elements of poetry, and I would recommend this book if you are interested in finding out more about Beowulf, and a good book to have.

It's getting late now and I should go to bed, but if you like fantasy, this is the great-great-great...grandfather of all fantasy fiction stuff, so don't miss it. Also, if you are into literature, poetry, or has geniune interest in nordic history, then this is defintely the must read for you as well. Finally, like I said before, Beowulf contains a lot of direct biblical references there should be nothing in the poem that should offend you as a Christian, so go ahead and knock yourself out as you embrace this historically important poem packed with action and excitment!