Article: "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm's Son": Tolkien as a modern Anglo-Saxon.(J.R.R. Tolkien)(Critical Essay)

THE recent success of Seamus Heaney's adaptation of the Old English Beowulf was a phenomenon as surprising to the literary world as to the publishing houses. As copies of this thousand year-old poem flew off the shelves and booksellers scrambled to find more of what had been a very modest print run, the shock was as great at the universities as it was at the New York Times. Why, everyone was suddenly wondering, was a musty old story about monsters and a hero in a strange old language more readable than Harry Potter?

Like the tip of the proverbial iceberg, the Heaney translation uncovers a vast and, for the most part, uncharted field of modern literature which ...

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