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"On Translating ''Beowulf''" is an essay by J. R. R. Tolkien which discusses the difficulties faced by anyone attempting to translate the Old English heroic-elegiac poem ''Beowulf'' into modern English. It was first published in 1940 as a preface contributed by Tolkien to a translation of Old English poetry; it was first published as an essay under its current name in the 1983 collection ''The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays''. In the essay, Tolkien explains the difficulty of translating individual words from Old English, noting that a word like ''eacen'' ('large', 'strong', 'supernaturally powerful') cannot readily be translated by the same word in each case. He notes the problem of translating poetic kennings such as ''sundwudu'' ('flood-timber', i.e. 'ship') and that the language chosen by the poet was already archaic at that moment. He explains that such terms had echoes and connotations of another world, an "unrecapturable magic".〔 The essay describes Old English metre, with each line in two opposed halves. The stressed syllables in each half contained alliterating sounds in six possible patterns, which Tolkien illustrates using modern English. Rhyme is used only for special effects, such as to imitate waves beating on a shore. The essay ends with the observation that the whole poem is itself in two opposed halves, covering "Youth + Age; he rose – fell."〔 Critics note that Tolkien attempted and sometimes failed to follow the rules he laid down in the essay in his own alliterative verse, in his own translations, and indeed in his narrative fiction such as ''Lord of the Rings''. ==Literary context== J.R.R. Tolkien contributed "On Translating ''Beowulf''" as a preface entitled "Prefatory Remarks on Prose Translation of 'Beowulf'" to the 1940 edition of C.L. Wrenn's book ''Beowulf and the Finnesburg Fragment, A Translation into Modern English Prose'', which had first been published in 1911 by John R. Clark Hall. Tolkien, the Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford, had himself attempted a prose translation of ''Beowulf'', but abandoned it, dissatisfied; it was published posthumously, edited by his son Christopher Tolkien as ''Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary'' in 2014. The preface was published under the title "On Translating ''Beowulf''" in 1983 (and in subsequent editions), as one of the essays in ''The Monsters and the Critics, and Other Essays'', also edited by Christopher Tolkien. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「On Translating Beowulf」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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