Public-domain ebook
Language: en1,826 downloads on Project Gutenberg
Subjects
In: Poetry·Historical Novels·Mythology, Legends & Folklore
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #9700.
This volume presents the Old English epic Beowulf together with the fragmentary “Fight at Finnsburh,” both rendered from the fourth edition of Harrison and Sharp. The editors have produced a base version that retains the original 19th‑century printing, preserving the idiosyncratic accented vowels (with y‑circumflex rendered as y‑acute) and correcting only those internal inconsistencies that would otherwise confuse a reader. A revised Unicode edition follows, adding macrons to indicate long vowels and incorporating scholarly notes that explain difficult passages. The front matter details the extensive editorial work: a bibliography of earlier editions, a glossary updated from Heyne’s, and appendices that record textual emendations, recent readings, and explanatory comments. In short, the book offers a carefully corrected text of the poem, a glossary, and scholarly apparatus aimed at making the ancient work accessible while remaining faithful to the source manuscript.
The language is the original Old English, presented with modern editorial conventions that highlight vowel length and quantity. Its style is dense, alliterative verse, reflecting the oral‑poetic tradition of Anglo‑Saxon England. Readers who enjoy linguistic puzzles, medieval literature, or the study of early English poetry will find it rewarding, as will students of philology and anyone interested in the mythic world of monsters and dragons that the poem famously portrays.
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This text is a corrected version of the fourth edition of Harrison and Sharp in its entirety. It comes in two basic versions. The base version, available in 8-bit (Latin-1) text and HTML, presents the original text as printed. This file contains the original version. It preserves the source-text's idiosyncratic use of accented vowels with the exception of y-circumflex, which is replaced by y-acute (ý) to fit within the Latin-1 character set. Manifestly unintentional errors in the text have been corrected. In general, this has only been done when the text is internally inconsistent (e.g., a quotation in the glossary does not match the main text). Forms that represent deliberate editorial choice have not been altered, even where they appear wrong. (For example, some of the markings of vowel length do not reflect current scholarly consensus.) Where an uncorrected problem may confuse the reader, I have inserted a note explaining the difficulty, signed KTH. A complete list of the changes made is appended at the end of the file. In order to make the text more useful to modern readers, I have also produced a revised edition, available in Unicode (UTF-8) and HTML. Notes from the source text that indicate changes adopted in later editions have been incorporated directly into the text and apparatus. Further, long vowels are indicated with macrons, as is the common practice of most modern editions. Finally, the quantity of some words has been altered to the values currently accepted as correct. Quantities have not been changed when the difference is a matter of editorial interpretation (e.g., gäst vs. gæst in l. 102, etc.) A list of these altered quantities appears at the end of the list of corrections. Your browser must support the Unicode character set to use the revised version.
In general, Harrison and Sharp use circumflex accents over vowels to mark long vowels. For ash, however, the actual character 'æ' represents the long vowel. Short ash is rendered with a-umlaut (ä). The long diphthongs (eo, ea, etc.) are indicated with an acute accent over the second vowel (eó, eá, etc.).
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