People are making a lot of @MARIADAHVANA’s new Beowulf translation for its use of “Bro!” for “Hwæt!”, and it IS a sharp and *delightful* translation, though “Bro!”/“Hwæt!” is only the tip of the neologismberg:pic.twitter.com/p3VXf1KWTq
Early Medieval historian: Ireland & Britain, kingship, landscapes, mentalities | knitting, video games, bread | ND | disabled | she/her | #BlackLivesMatter
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People are making a lot of @MARIADAHVANA’s new Beowulf translation for its use of “Bro!” for “Hwæt!”, and it IS a sharp and *delightful* translation, though “Bro!”/“Hwæt!” is only the tip of the neologismberg:pic.twitter.com/p3VXf1KWTq
The final stanza there is one I was really curious about and I love it in Headley’s translation. The whole “leodum lithost ond lofgeornost” speech is so tonally *weird* if you translate it directly, but zooming out totally works.
And the whole poem IS tonally weird? It’s an odd mix of Viking saga “BROS! BROS! BROS!” and more classical, like, Odysseyish tableaus in more baroque prose. This translation captures that incredibly well.
And then "and then for THIS two page span Beowulf is a Christian, no this part wasn't added by the monks that transcribed this why would you say that" sorry no i'm not bitter
lmao yeah there’s a lot of “AND THEN HE GAVE THANKS TO JESUS, WHO IS THE CHRIST AND ALSO THE GOD, METODES MILDSE, JSYK”
Hate to be that guy but the extent to which Beowulf was an oral poem then committed to text isn’t known, and no one can even agree on a date (7th to 11th c???) but while it may be about a pagan past doesn’t mean it wasn’t also created by Christians.
There was a lot of valourization of the “ancient” past among the early English kings. They maintained a descent from Woden for a long time. But the dichotomy between “pagan” and Christian isn’t so clear cut.
And it’s not a Viking poem, it’s quite definitively English, although the English claimed descent from peoples who were also the ancestors of the Vikings.
But as someone who studies conversion-era England, I really bristle at this perpetual idea that monks are sitting in their cells cackling while they make the innocent pagan stories Christian. That isn’t at all how texts were formed.
This is a good response!! But (1) the distinction between viking and anglo saxon isn't really so clear cut, is it? There was cross pollination and I thought it was during the exact period Beowulf was being composed
Like I said, no one can agree on the date (lots of debates on it for decades), but even if it was composed during or after the Viking invasions it doesn’t make it a Viking text. The English were big on their distant past from the Continent.
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