Beowulf: A Dual-Language Edition

The first major poem in English literature • Translated by Howell D. Chickering with the Old English on facing pages

Beowulf tells the story of the life and death of the legendary hero Beowulf in his three great battles with supernatural monsters. The ideal Anglo-Saxon warrior-aristocrat, Beowulf is an example of the heroic spirit at its finest.

Leading Beowulf scholar Howell D. Chickering’s fresh and lively translation, featuring the Old English on facing pages, allows the reader to encounter Beowulf as poetry. This edition incorporates recent scholarship and provides historical and literary context for the modern reader. It includes the following:

• an introduction
• a guide to reading aloud
• a chart of royal genealogies
• notes on the background of the poem
• critical commentary
• glosses on the eight most famous passages, for the student who wishes to translate from the original
• an extensive bibliography

HOWELL D. CHICKERING is the G. Armour Craig Professor of Language and Literature, Emeritus at Amherst College. His critical essays, chiefly on medieval English poetry, have appeared in such journals as The Chaucer Review, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Kenyon Review, Philological Quarterly, PMLA, Speculum, and Viator.