A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse

By Richard Hamer

Book Overview

A Choice of Anglo-Saxon Verse contains the Old English texts of all the major short poems, such as 'The Battle of Maldon', 'The Dream of the Rood', 'The Wanderer' and 'The Seafarer', as well as a generous representation of the many important fragments, riddles and gnomic verses that survive from the seventh to the twelfth centuries, with facing-page verse translations. These poems are the well-spring of the English poetic tradition, and this anthology provides a unique window into the mind and culture of the Anglo-Saxons. The volume is an essential companion to Faber's edition of Beowulf , translated by Seamus Heaney.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0571325394
• ISBN13: 9780571325399
• Release Date: August 2015
• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.2" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 7 to 9 years
• Grade Range: Grades 2 to 4

Customer Reviews

Highly Recommend To The OE Reader

My Old English class in college was the most laborious of them all especially as my textbook was stolen, which had an extensive glossary. This book helped smooth out the rough edges of my translations and just gave me a better sense of how to put the words together in some coherent form. It's a nice collection of the most well known OE verses and poems and should prove interesting to the non-student who is interested in very old poetry and etymology as well.

The best available introduction to OE poetry for beginners.

Old English poetry is hard to translate for a variey of reasons. OE poetic style is very compact, very nominal and very dense.Accurate translations often seem wordy; "poetic" ones tend to miss a lot. This is the only book currently available ( as far as I know) which provides a selection of OE poems in a bilingual format. I have used this book in teaching; the translations are pretty good and the OE is right there for the curious. A good and very handy book.