|
|
|
|
| Overview |
 While Beowulf is generally considered the earliest major work of English poetry, it is almost always taught in translation and its verse form and poetic techniques are often unfamiliar. By comparing a number of translations of Beowulf with each other and with the basic poetic elements of Old English alliterative verse, this lesson asks students to reflect upon the nature of translation not as an act of accurate representation of a literary work but as an act of interpretive re-creation.
|
| From Theory to Practice |
In his article, John Niles reminds us that
translations of a literary work are not the literary work itself, but an “imaginative
reconstruction” of it. Regardless of whether or not a translation is good
or bad, a translation reflects a number of interpretive choices made by the translator.
For instance, the translator of a literary work is confronted with the fact that
it might not be possible to accurately represent the style, diction, grammar,
syntax, meter, rhythm, connotation, ornamentation, verse form, and use of language
of the original work, and therefore they must decide which, if any of characteristics
of the original, will be attempted. Likewise, translators must decide whether
or not their translation should strive to be a work of art in its own right or
if it should sacrifice artistic quality for accurate representation.
Further Reading
Niles, John. “Rewriting Beowulf: The Task of Translation.” College
English 55.8 (December 1993): 858-878.
|
| Student Objectives |
Students will
- be introduced to Beowulf’s original language, Old English.
- engage in close readings and analysis of a number of translations
of the poem.
- discuss the nature of translation and how a translator’s
decisions shape our understanding of a literary text.
|
| Instructional Plan |
Resources
Preparation
Instruction and Activities
Session One
- Distribute the Beowulf Translations handout pages you wish to
use.
- As a class, briefly review Old English poetics. The Beowulf:
Language and Poetics Quick Reference Sheet and the Literary
Guide: Beowulf can help walk you
through this.
- Explain to the class that you would like them to listen to the
passage read in Old English and to follow along with the handout. The
idea behind listening to and seeing the Old English is not to try to understand
the language but to hear and see the alliteration, meter, rhythm, and diction
of the poem.
- Having
listened to passage, have the class look at two or three translations of
the poem. Use the Donaldson and Lehmann translations. The Donaldson translation
is useful here as a word for word translation of Beowulf. While it is not
100% accurate, it is widely considered the best word for word translation
available and is regularly used as a reference by students learning to read
Old English. And the Lehmann translation is useful because it, maybe more
so than any other translation, imitates the original verse form the poem.
- Begin by having volunteers read each of the translations out-loud.
- Ask the
class how the translations differ from each other and why these differences
may exist. Keep a running list.
- Encourage them to think about choices
in the use of prose or poetry; of alliteration, stress, rhyme, and meter;
the use, or lack thereof, of Old English poetics; use of punctuation;
syntax, grammar, and diction; the way people, places, and actions are described;
and the number of lines used (while the original has 25 1/2 lines in
this passage, some of the poetic versions have as few as 20 lines).
- Introduce the
class to the idea that translations cannot be accurate reflections of
an original but are instead “imaginative reconstructions.”
- As
a class, develop a checklist of criteria for evaluating translations
of Beowulf.
- Explain to the class that Beowulf has been translated many times
and that in your next session you are going to continue your examination
of Beowulf translations to explore the choices translators make,
how those choices result in “imaginative reconstructions,” and how examining
a number of translations can help provide a better understanding of the poem
than any one translation can impart.
Session Two
- Review the checklist of criteria created in the previous session.
- If desired, demonstrate the use of the checklist with the Translations section
of the Literary Guide: Beowulf.
- Break the class into 4 or 5 small groups and give each group one or two
new versions of the section explored in the previous session.
- Ask each group to compare their new versions with the
Old English poem and the translations they have already studied, using the
checklist created during the last session to help analyze the new translations.
- Encourage students to expand or modify the checklist if they decide it
is not complete.
- Come back together as a class and share the findings. You might want
to create a comparison chart on the board.
- Ask the class to discuss what
it means to translate a literary work. Urge them to identify the kinds of
decisions that a translator makes.
Extensions
- While this lesson asks students to consider issues related language translation,
there are other kinds of translation your students can consider, such as translations
into other genres or types of media. Beowulf, for instance, has been
adapted into a symphony, novels, comic
books, movies, cartoons, and even a
rock opera. John Gardner’s Grendel and Michael Crichton’s Eaters
of the Dead are readily
available novel adaptations. Gardner’s novel tells the story from Grendel’s
perspective, and Crichton’s book, which was remade into the movie The
13th Warrior, imagines a pseudo-historical basis for the poem (Crichton’s
novel is also interesting in that its first four chapters are taken from Ibn
Fadlan’s historical account
of his mission from Baghdad to the king of the Bulgars). Gareth Hinds’ graphic
novel, The Collected Beowulf, is also worth considering. It combines an old
translation of the poem with illustrations.
A short and fun adaptation of Beowulf is Henry Beard’s poem “Grendel’s
Dog,” which is a poem about Beocat, found in his 1994 collection Poetry
for Cats. Both the 1999 Beowulf movie and the 2005 Beowulf & Grendel
movie are loose adaptations of the poem and contain material which may make
them unsuitable for classroom situations
For a fuller list of translations and adaptations, see Osborn, Marijane
(1997) “Translations, Versions, Illustrations,” A Beowulf
Handbook.
Ed. Robert E. Bjork and John D. Niles. University of Nebraska Press. 341-372.
- Students may also enjoy comparing passages from J. R. R. Tolkien’s
fiction with Beowulf. Tolkien is still considered one of the most
important Beowulf scholars in history, and he drew much inspiration
from the poem. In The Hobbit, the description of the Gate entrance
to the Lonely Mountain (ch. 11, “On
the Doorstep”) is very similar to the description of the dragon’s
barrow in Beowulf. And Beorn the were-bear (ch. 7, “Queer Lodgings”)
lives in a Heorot-like hall and is himself a Beowulfian figure. The Old English
for bear is “beorn,” and Beowulf is actually a kenning: beo-wulf
= bee-wolf = bear. The Grendel episode in Beowulf has been connected
to “The
Bear’s
Son” folktale, and there is a were-bear connected to the Scandinavian
legends of Hrothgar and the Danes. While The Hobbit’s Beorn is
clearly not supposed to be Beowulf, he is at the same time clearly inspired
by Beowulf and its related material.
Likewise, the Riders of Rohan in The Lord of the Rings are inspired
by Anglo-Saxon culture and their language and names are Old English. Many scenes
in The
Two Towers are taken from or have parallels in Beowulf. Eomer’s
initial challenge to Aragorn is parallel with the coast-guard’s challenge
to Beowulf and the Geats; the initial approach to and description of Theoden’s
great hall Meduseld is similar to Beowulf’s approach to and description
of Hrothgar’s Heorot; and Gandalf and company’s initial reception
at Meduseld is parallel to that of Beowulf’s initial reception. If
you do decide to use the Riders of Rohan in conjunction with your study of
Beowulf, remember that there are some significant differences between
their culture and Anglo-Saxon culture. Specifically, when Tolkien created
these characters, he imagined what their culture might have been like had
the Anglo-Saxon peoples gone east into the steppes rather than west to England.
While the Riders of Rohan are horse people who live and fight on horseback,
the Anglo-Saxons, although they owned and used horses, weren’t
a horse culture, and they fought on foot. Information on the connection between
the Riders of Rohan and the Anglo-Saxons can be found in the widely available
The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (2000).
While very different from Beowulf, Tolkien’s short story “Farmer
Giles of Ham” has parallels. Inexpensive editions of the story are available
in The Tolkien Reader (1986) and in Smith of Wootton Major and
Farmer Giles of Ham (1984).
Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond’s edition of Farmer Giles of
Ham (1999),
while much more expensive, addresses the connections between Beowulf and “Farmer
Giles of Ham” in the introduction. The book’s notes make it
an excellent teacher edition. The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien also
provide some useful information on this subject.
- When reading other works in translation, consider spending some time looking
at and listening to the work in the original language and, when possible,
comparing a few different translations. Translations of Chaucer or adaptations
of Shakespeare’s
plays are excellent works to explore along these lines.
- Ask students to make their own adaptations of Beowulf, either
the passage covered by the translations or some other section of the poem.
For instance, there’s the well-known couplet: “Grendel’s
tastes are rather planish; for breakfast, just a couple danish” from
ShrinkLits.
Students can play with genre and write a sports story, a news report, a play,
or someone’s
diary. Or by modifying the format, students might write a Beowulf song or
create a series of PowerPoint slides or a movie (live action, Flash, or even
pictures and narration using software like iMovie). Part of the assignment
would be to ask students to reflect upon how their adaptation is an act of “imaginative
reconstruction.”
For a much more detailed discussion of the theory and practice of “imaginative
reconstruction,” see Rob Pope’s Textual Intervention: Critical
and Creative Strategies for Literary Studies (Routledge, 1995).
Web Resources
- The
Electronic Introduction to Old English
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/research/rawl/IOE/index.html
- A complete electronic version of a print textbook. An excellent resource
for information about Old English language and poetics or to learn Old English.
- Beowulf:
A Study Guide
http://web.utk.edu/~rliuzza/Beowulf/index.htm
- Professor Liuzza’s site is an excellent meta-page with links to many
other Beowulf resources. Liuzza also offers 20 questions for discussion.
- Resources
for the Study of Beowulf
http://www.library.unr.edu/subjects/guides/beowulf.html
- Another excellent resource which is both an introduction to the poem and
a starting point for further research.
|
| Student Assessment/Reflections |
- Observe your students as you work through and discuss the various translations.
Do they seem interested and engaged with the discussion? Are they contributing
to the class discussion? Do their comments and questions demonstrate an understanding
of the material?
- One assessment option would be to have students engage in a close reading
comparison of the translations. In this assignment, students would be asked
to focus their analysis on one small part of the poem such as its use of
diction, meter, punctuation, the description of Grendel, the first four lines,
and so forth. Ask students to compare how two or more translations translate
that specific aspect of the poem. Or, alternatively, you can ask students to
do a close reading of many aspects of one translation.
|
1 - Students read a wide range of print and nonprint texts to build an understanding of texts, of themselves, and of the cultures of the United States and the world; to acquire new information; to respond to the needs and demands of society and the workplace; and for personal fulfillment. Among these texts are fiction and nonfiction, classic and contemporary works.
2 - Students read a wide range of literature from many periods in many genres to build an understanding of the many dimensions (e.g., philosophical, ethical, aesthetic) of human experience.
3 - Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
6 - Students apply knowledge of language structure, language conventions (e.g., spelling and punctuation), media techniques, figurative language, and genre to create, critique, and discuss print and nonprint texts.
9 - Students develop an understanding of and respect for diversity in language use, patterns, and dialects across cultures, ethnic groups, geographic regions, and social roles.
11 - Students participate as knowledgeable, reflective, creative, and critical members of a variety of literacy communities.
12 - Students use spoken, written, and visual language to accomplish their own purposes (e.g., for learning, enjoyment, persuasion, and the exchange of information).
|
|
|
