skip
to main | skip to
sidebar

The Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project

There's more to Anglo-Saxon narrative poetry than
Beowulf, and quite a bit of it is just as engaging and charming. However, very
little of it has been set into verse translation. That needs to change... Oh
yes, and there will be occasional musings on things medieval... Check along the
sidebar for links to the translated
texts.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Guthlac
A is done

OK, so Guthlac A is finally done, though I'm not so
happy with the eighth section. I feel that it came out a bit too close to other
translations I consulted (in this case, Bradley and Kennedy), and needs a bit of
space to breathe, which will allow me to really get into what's going on there.
The sudden movement in the final 20 lines or so that goes from a singular
subject (Guthlac) to plural (everyone like him) feels strange. However, I do
like the final seven lines that describe the New Jerusalem and return to the
feminine subject "heo" that stands out in the opening lines.

On to Guthlac B, but it will be much slower since
the job list came out.

Posted by Aaron Hostetter
at 8:12
PM 0
comments

Labels:
Guthlac

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Guthlac
A nearly completed

Goodness gracious it feels good to get
something finished! I have updated the Guthlac page so that all but the very
last section of the first poem is complete. Notes on the new lines will be
filled in sometime in the next few days.

Is it such a good thing to be
utterly enthralled by the qualities of the poem you're translating? I feel like
Guthlac A is the greatest poem ever,
although I know realistically that this is far from so. At first, I felt a bit
embarrassed by the poem's clunky relative clauses, its aggravating habit of
modifying a singular noun in the dative by an adjective in plural (see the quote
below), its limited and very repetitive vocabulary, and its cyclical structure
based on a recurrence of a single scenario of demonic temptation. But as the
lines turned into full sections, the sections built up momentum, and the voice
became familiar I have a new respect for the poet's work.

Guthlac A is a haunting expression of the
banality of evil, of temptations that do not blitzkreig so much as besiege
endlessly. Guthlac requires patient endurance against the mind-numbing stagnancy
of the demons' world-view. The demons emphasize the perils of conformity by
repeating the same attack over and over again, demanding that Guthlac maintain
their status quo. The emphasis consistently lies in the fact that because they
have suffered for pride Guthlac must necessarily do so as well. Guthlac, on the
other hand, embodies a possibility of change, of changing his way of life and
demeanor, even as his name ("war-play") as the terms of that battle are
transformed as he devotes himself to spiritual labor: "Ac ic minum Criste cweman
þence/ leofran lace" [but I think to satisfy my lord Christ with a dearer sort
of play] (306-7). By contrast the devils' focus on battle-play can never be
materialized, they menace and grab, but cannot harm the saint. For all their
intentions their belligerence is not more substantial than the air, and at one
point, they are even described as "lyft-lacende" (bouncing like the air or upon
the air) (146), a kenning whose assonance chimes with Guthlac's name, relating
and dividing them at the same time.

(On second look at this post, I
realize that my reading of Guthlac A
must be influenced by my own personal tribulations in trying to get my Sir Gowther chapter done the way it should be,
to advance the stakes and really get the argument to say something important.)

Posted by Aaron Hostetter
at 11:48
AM 0
comments

Labels:
Guthlac

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Guthlac A
IV

The fifth installment of Guthlac A is now
complete. I have been experimenting with ways to organize the vocabulary in a
database, so that had slowed progress for a few days.

I know that there
are a lot of computer people amongst you Anglo-Saxonists, so any suggestions of
how to manipulate data in MS Excel would be greatly appreciated: I want to
create a wordlist that preserves each form a word takes, but that swiftly
eliminates duplicates and extremely common words, so I don't have to wade
through them when I need to look for a word. For Guthlac, I can just use
Roberts's glossary, but I'm looking ahead to a bigger poem like Genesis.

Posted by Aaron Hostetter
at 10:55
AM 0
comments

Labels:
Guthlac

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Update
to Elene

I've added about thirty lines to the Elene translation that were lying about. I
don't really mean to do two poems at the same time--and Lord knows I have enough
to do without it--but I did want to get everything I have out on the
table.

I have not been satisfied with the sound of Elene so far, and so I have pushed it aside
until I can digest a few more translations. There is something very different
about the voice of the poem--Andreas and
Guthlac A just don't have it-- and I
need to get my mind around expressing it that voice.

Posted by Aaron Hostetter
at 5:25
AM 0
comments

Labels:
Elene

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Updates
to Guthlac

The first four sections of Guthlac A are now complete, so please come and
visit to check things out. I recently stumbled across Jane Roberts's 1979
edition and remembered that Bernard Muir's edition of the Exeter Book existed,
so I now have a much more up-to-date edition to use in the translation. A
relief, but one that will necessitate some revisiting of the notes so far, I
fear.

Consequently a bibliographic list of editions and translations has
been added to the start of the Notes section, just to help you all play along at
home.

Posted by Aaron Hostetter
at 9:25
AM 0
comments

Labels:
Guthlac

Saturday, August 9, 2008

More
Guthlac

The first three parts of Guthlac A are posted, and the notes sections
is struggling along behind it. I feel that I am starting to get a feel for the
poem's unique qualities: its heavily periodic structure that depends on very
dense repetition, its unusual meter (Sievers types don't really help very much
in many of the lines), and the poem's obsession with state and condition (as
evidenced by the constant use of had,
and the frequent use of legal terminology).

I hope you are enjoying the
evolution of the translation as much as I am.

On another note, ASNPP just
broke a minor landmark today. The page has had 1,005 hits, with 756 unique
visitors. I still have a long way to go to catch up with In The Middle, and the
guinea pig cartoon page has
still had 8 times as many hits, but I am very proud this project has received so
much interest. Thank you all!

Posted by Aaron Hostetter
at 2:32
PM 3
comments

Labels:
Guthlac

Sunday, July 27, 2008

I'm back

Hello, gentle readers --

I am
finally back from my summer travels (wedding, honeymoon, and moving into a new
apartment) and thought that there should be some kind of new activity here.

So I will officially announce the creation of the Guthlac translation page, a poem that is often
in my thought while carving through my current chapter on Sir Gowther. Format will follow the Andreas
and Elene pages, and there will be (sporadic) activity on all three pages.

I thought I would urge you over to my first attempt to render the
breathtaking, heart-rending beauty of the opening of Guthlac, a start of a poem that feels utterly
unlike any other of the narrative poems. It seems inverted, as if the homiletic
payoff is delivered right up front, one of the "lænan dreamas" (loaned
pleasures) alluded to at the start of the poem, which the reader's continued
attention for the rest of the poem (or poems) will repay.

So I promise
your attention will be repaid in the near future. As usual, I humbly beseech
your input, so please send along your comments and critiques.

Posted by Aaron Hostetter
at 11:50
AM 1
comments

Labels:
Guthlac

Older
Posts

Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

What should be the next poem translated here?

Translated Texts

Andreas

Elene

Guthlac

Enumeratio Institutionum

The
Electronic Introduction to Old English

Medievolution

Anglo-Saxon Studies
Colloquium

Boswoth-Toller
OE Dictionary online

Enumeratio Blogorum

In the Middle

Anglo-Saxon
Aloud

Chaucer hath a Blog

Old English in NYC

Unlocked Wordhoard

The All Purpose
Magical Tent

Point of Know Return

Blog Archive

▼ 2008
(26)

▼ September
(2)

Guthlac
A is done

Guthlac
A nearly completed

► August
(4)

Guthlac
A IV

Update
to Elene

Updates
to Guthlac

More
Guthlac

► July
(1)

I'm
back

► June
(1)

Hello
again!

► May
(4)

ASF2
PT 2 -- The Translations

Andreas
complete

Update
once again

Anglo-Saxon
Futures 2

► April
(4)

Update:
1206-1359

Slight
changes

More
and more updates...

Cresting
the hill...

► March
(4)

Update

And
another...

New
Updates

Updated
lines

► February
(3)

On
Æl-myrcna, l. 432

Andreas
Update

Update
to translation; ASSC Conference

► January
(3)

Working
out some changes

Some
redesign ideas

Andreas
Translation, cont'd (168b-254)

► 2007
(6)

► December
(5)

An
introduction to Andreas

ANDREAS:
A VERSE TRANSLATION (59-168a)

Translation
Rationale

The
Monster of Translation

A
bit of translation to start things off...

► November
(1)

A
Proposal as Introduction

De Re Mihi

Aaron Hostetter

I am a fifth-year graduate student at Princeton
University, studying medieval literature in the English Dept. I am writing a
dissertation entitled Digesting Romance: The Uses of Food and Cooking in
Medieval English Romance.
View my complete
profile