For Thursday: Headley's Beowulf, Pages 1-51 (approx)

NOTE: If you have a different translation, you’ll miss out on Headley’s colorful language and very idiomatic translation, but you’ll gain in other departments. However, page 51 won’t mean much to you, so read from the beginning to after the poet tells the tale of Finn shortly after Beowulf defeats Grendel. Also, you won’t be able to answer the questions below about Headley’s translation, so choose the ones you can answer.

ALSO: For those interested, here's a New Yorker article about Headley's translation, which brings up many of the issues we raised in class, and defends many of her decisions: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/08/31/a-beowulf-for-our-moment

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Some of Headley’s word choices are not only surprisingly modern but outright shocking, such as this one on page 29: “Hashtag: blessed.” What did you think about her reading this way, and discuss ONE specific example that either really worked for you OR really didn’t. Be sure to explain why.

Q2: Beowulf as a poem often seems at war with itself. On the one hand, it speaks of God and Salvation, Heaven and Hell. But elsewhere, it speaks of Fate and even the very Anglo-Saxon concept of “wyrd” (page 34), which is more the Greek sense of Fate, as controlled by the gods (and not God). Why do you think this poem reference both the Christian and pagan belief systems? Does one seem more in control than the other?

Q3: Beowulf is also a beautifully poetic work of art, full of gorgeous turns of phrase, kennings, and ample alliteration. Discuss a passage in Headley’s translation that, in Culler’s words, “foregrounds language itself: makes it strange, thrusts it at you…so you can’t forget that you are dealing with language shaped in odd ways” (28). How does Headley (as well as the original poet) try to make language strange and exciting for us? And how does this affect the story itself?

Q4: Culler also writes in Chapter 2 that “A work exists between and among many texts, through its relations to them,” which he calls “intertextuality” (33). Though Beowulf is quite an ancient poem, and we don’t really know all that much about Anglo Saxon literature, how do we know that this is a profoundly intertextual poem? What ideas, characters, or stories does it seem to be responding to? How do we know that the world of Beowulf has a past that it drew from for inspiration and guidance?