Why 'Beowulf?'
Why 'Beowulf?'
That English lit mainstay 'extends our horizons, stretches the imagination'
By Rose McIlveen | |
|For leisure reading the epic poem Beowulf is probably a tough sell. Alfred David, an Indiana University| |
|Bloomington professor emeritus of English, is a believer, but a realist as well. He even has a sense of| |
|humor about the general reaction to the required reading for generations of college English majors. | |
|David recalls a Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall, in which Annie (played by Diane Keaton) is leafing | |
|through a college catalog and mentions the literature courses. "Just don抰 take any course where they | |
|make you read Beowulf," Woody tells her. | |
|David, who has taught the poem for many years, thought he was through with it when he retired in 1994. | |
|Not so. In the mid-1980s, W.W. Norton & Company asked Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney to | |
|replace the prose translation of Beowulf in the Norton Anthology of English Literature with a new | |
|translation from the Old English. | |
|IU's David, who edits the Middle Ages section for the Norton Anthology, agreed to act as a consultant | |
|to Heaney, whose translation was long in coming. It was first published in 1999 in Britain and in the | |
|seventh edition of the Norton. That year, Heaney's Beowulf won the prestigious Whitbread Prize in | |
|Britain, selling 50,000 copies and edging out the latest Harry Potter novel by one vote. It then came | |
|out in an American edition and hit the top 20 sales on the Amazon.com Web site. | |
|So what could possibly stir that many Britons out of their reading ruts? | |
|"Beowulf is a saga that includes a hero and his battles with monsters. The poem also opens a window on | |
That English lit mainstay 'extends our horizons, stretches the imagination'
By Rose McIlveen | |
|For leisure reading the epic poem Beowulf is probably a tough sell. Alfred David, an Indiana University| |
|Bloomington professor emeritus of English, is a believer, but a realist as well. He even has a sense of| |
|humor about the general reaction to the required reading for generations of college English majors. | |
|David recalls a Woody Allen movie, Annie Hall, in which Annie (played by Diane Keaton) is leafing | |
|through a college catalog and mentions the literature courses. "Just don抰 take any course where they | |
|make you read Beowulf," Woody tells her. | |
|David, who has taught the poem for many years, thought he was through with it when he retired in 1994. | |
|Not so. In the mid-1980s, W.W. Norton & Company asked Nobel Prize-winning Irish poet Seamus Heaney to | |
|replace the prose translation of Beowulf in the Norton Anthology of English Literature with a new | |
|translation from the Old English. | |
|IU's David, who edits the Middle Ages section for the Norton Anthology, agreed to act as a consultant | |
|to Heaney, whose translation was long in coming. It was first published in 1999 in Britain and in the | |
|seventh edition of the Norton. That year, Heaney's Beowulf won the prestigious Whitbread Prize in | |
|Britain, selling 50,000 copies and edging out the latest Harry Potter novel by one vote. It then came | |
|out in an American edition and hit the top 20 sales on the Amazon.com Web site. | |
|So what could possibly stir that many Britons out of their reading ruts? | |
|"Beowulf is a saga that includes a hero and his battles with monsters. The poem also opens a window on | |