Beowulf By All: a Community Translation

Published this summer was Beowulf By All: a Community Translation, edited by Treharne, and Stanford former doctoral student—Jean Abbott, and former Stanford Text Technologies Fellow, Mateusz Fafinski. 

The book was conceived as a rejection of the elitism, sexism and racism in the field of Early English Studies. An open call for translators of the eleventh-century Old English poem, Beowulf, resulted in more than two hundred contributors coming forward to offer their translations of the story of the hero, Beowulf, and his slaying of a sequence of monstrous opponents. Our participants range from interested members of the public, to undergraduates in Old English classes, advanced researchers, and senior medievalists. It’s a tale of what can happen when the community comes together to offer new, dynamic work on this old, but brilliant, literary masterpiece.