Talk:Beowulf: A New Verse Translation

Beowulf is described as 'octogenarian' in the plot when he fights the dragon. Where does this information come from? 87.115.111.143 (talk) 06:10, 10 February 2021 (UTC)
 * Said "old", which is sufficient here. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:56, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Spoken vs written vs scholarly
Almost all of the criticism quoted here is either on the translation as a written work, to be read silently to oneself, or as a scholarly work, to aid in understanding the nuance of the original work (which it really isn't). However, this is I think more than many other translations (like the original) a spoken work, to be read out loud by a narrator (perhaps Heaney himself) and listened to by others. This is only briefly alluded to in the mention by Gussow of "Heaney's recitation". Surely there is more to say about this aspect of the work, rather than focusing so much on critiquing it for not being other things that it is not. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:08, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

Thanks... OK, I'll see if anyone's written about the unwritten side of things. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:18, 24 March 2022 (UTC)


 * That wasn't easy. Talk of sound or phonetics or spoken word is all confounded by learned discussion of poetic technique, or sales talk of audio recordings. However, I've found McGuire who says in so many words that Heaney's version is best read aloud. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:15, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

excessively paraphrasey?
The style of this article seems to be quite removed from the normal wikipedia editorial style, seeming to have uncited paraphrasing,

> The Tolkien scholar Tom Shippey wrote that if Heaney thought his dialect had somehow maintained a native purity, he was deluded."

and IMO awkwardly quoting individual words from sources:

> Shippey noted the opening "So", commenting that if "Right" is the "English English" for hwaet, then there were two folk narratives in Heaneywulf, one personal and one academic; and that if Heaney thought that his dialect somehow "preserves a native purity" lost in other dialects, that was a delusion.

At some point is it better to just quote a paragraph in the book rather than paraphrasing, and inconsistently citing individual words, and then deciding to refer to the work as 'Heaneywulf'? 2A01:C22:ACF5:F00:B97A:81B9:A8F8:5C49 (talk) 14:02, 13 April 2023 (UTC)