A widely celebrated translator\'s vivid, accessible, and elegantly concise rendering of an ancient English masterpiece Beowulf tells the story of a Scandinavian hero who defeats three evil creatures--a huge, cannibalistic ogre named Grendel, Grendel\'s monstrous mother, and a dragon--and then dies, mortally wounded during his last encounter.
This new translation--spare, sinuous, vigorous in its narration, and translucent in its poetry--makes a masterpiece accessible to everyone..
It both hews closely to the meaning of the Old English and captures its wild energy and vitality, not just as a deep work of literature but also as a rousing entertainment that can still stir our feelings and rivet our attention today, after more than a thousand years.
Stephen Mitchell\'s marvelously clear and vivid rendering re-creates the robust masculine music of the original.
From beginning to end, we feel we are in the hands of a master storyteller.
It is also a deeply pious poem, so bold in its reverence for a virtuous pagan past that it teeters on the edge of heresy.
If the definition of a superhero is someone who uses his special powers to fight evil, then Beowulf is our first English superhero story, and arguably our best.
A widely celebrated translator\'s vivid, accessible, and elegantly concise rendering of an ancient English masterpiece Beowulf tells the story of a Scandinavian hero who defeats three evil creatures--a huge, cannibalistic ogre named Grendel, Grendel\'s monstrous mother, and a dragon--and then dies, mortally wounded during his last encounter
