Anglo-Saxon Poetry (Everyman's Library)

By: R.K. (trans.) Gordon

Book Overview

Anglo-Saxon poetry is esteemed for its subtle artistry and for its wealth of insights into the artistic, social and spiritual preoccupations of the formative first centuries of English literature.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0460107941
• ISBN13: 9780460107945
• Release Date: August 1982
• Publisher: Dent
• Length: 592 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Terrific volume of poetry, questionable translations though

Bradley's collection of translated Anglo-Saxon Poetry has (it seems to me) one thing going for it. First, the sheer amount of Old English poetry which is presented here is huge, nearly twice as much as is presented in Kevin Crossley-Holland's "The Anglo-Saxon World". Many of the poems are hard to find in translation, including "Elene", "Andreas", and a number of the Old English Riddles. Whatever merit this book gains from its size is, sadly, lost by its overly technical and extremeley non-poetic translations (you may forget that what you are reading *was* poetry prior to this translation). Bradley often decides to render the poetry into prose, leaving the reader with rather cumbersome lines, especially evident in "The Wife's Lament" and "Beowulf" (which he translates completely). My opinion, you ask? Buy this book for its large collection of poetry, but please also buy Kevin Crossley-Holland's The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (Oxford World's Classics), which allows the reader who encounters these delightful and somber works in modern English to realize that they are real and visceral poetry.