Review: Beowulf (A New Verse Translation – Seamus Heaney)

Madeline’s rating: 2/5 stars.

[Please note: this book was part of my core reading for my degree course, and I thought that I’d write some brief notes on it, in review style. Therefore, this review isn’t substantial, only brief and short].

I really wanted to enjoy this book, it being one of the greatest early works of literature, but I found it tedious in places to the extent that I didn’t want to continue reading. But I persisted, and finished reading this book.

The copy I have was translated by Seamus Heaney, and I found the divisions in the verse translation helpful, where the translator had put a short summary of what was happening.

I must admit, the character of Beowulf did annoy me; I found him to be very pompous and arrogant due to his mannerism, yet I realise that that was how a great hero of the time would’ve spoken.

I didn’t feel that anything really happened, and I was disappointed by the ending, yet I suppose that it did prove that Beowulf was only human after all.

One good thing about the edition  that I had was that it had a section called ‘Contexts’ after the actual poem, which gives lots of essential historical contextual information. Also, there were a number of critical essays included at the back of the book, about this text, by authors such as J R R Tolkien.