[gothic-l] Re: Beowolf--the Goth? Good News for Beowolf Buffs!

[sig]

Hails,

 I know that the Gothic touch is slight, but for this "Gothic
Connection" brought up again and again while discussing Beowulf.
 Anyhow, here's a review of the CD. Note the last paragraph about
translations or, rather, lack thereof:

    "The history of the text of Beowulf is almost as dramatic as
the adventure it narrates. The earliest manuscript (perhaps)
belongs to the 11th century. After the dissolution of the
monasteries, it came into the possession of Laurence Nowell. It
was acquired in the 17th century by Robert Cotton, who donated it
to the state in 1700. The manuscript survived fire in 1731, before
being moved to the British Museum on its foundation in 1753. The
charred and disintegrating remains of the manuscript were studied
by the Danish scholar, G.J. Thorkelin, whose library was wrecked
and papers destroyed by the Royal Navy in 1807 during the siege of
Copenhagen. Collations in 1817 and 1824 demonstrate the
manuscript's rapid decay before finally being conserved in 1845.
It was among the first texts published as a photographic
facscimile (Zupitza 1882), among the earliest manuscripts analysed
under ultra-violet light (Smith 1938) and has recently been
subjected to innovative fibre-optic study (Kiernan 1984). At the
core of Electronic Beowulf is not one but
several Beowulfs.

The prize in some respects is the 11th century manuscript bound
into the Cotton Vitellius A XV Codex, and including the other
manuscripts that were bound with it, such as the Soliloquies of
Saint Augustine and a fragment of the Anglo-Saxon poem Judith,
which deserve more in the way of commentary than they receive. The
high-resolution images are supplemented by close-up back-lit and
ultra-violet images that show letters now lost to the naked eye,
either because of corrections made in antiquity, or obscured
during conservation.

These images are presented as 'hot spots' on the text and are
navigated effectively and cleanly, with a clever tool allowing the
user a simple view of the manuscript or an interactive view that
highlights parts of the text that have been lost or found.
All this is supported by a hypertext dictionary for those of us
whose Old English isn't what it ought to be, and a series of
articles describing the project and the methods used to capture
the text.

Accompanying this complete set of high-resolution images are
equally high-resolution images of four early transcriptions of the
poem. Finally, there is a fifth, modern, transcription and edition
that highlight the multiple and at times conflicting nature of the
text. The four early transcriptions reveal the extent of decay in
the manuscript.

Thorkelin's two transcriptions of the 1780s contain some 900
letters that had decayed or become invisible by the time Conybeare
saw the manuscript in 1817. Only seven years later, Madden's
transcription shows that repeated handling of the fragile and
rapidly disintegrating text had resulted in the loss of some 1,900
letters - principally from the edges of the singed manuscript.
This set of transcriptions demonstrate wonderfully why Thorkelin's
edition may be more useful for an historical understanding than
the medieval manuscript, since this has deteriorated very badly
since Thorkelin's study was published.

    Electronic Beowulf brings together many different versions of
the text, including the Cotton Vitellius codex and all the
important early transcriptions, as well as a modern transcription
and edition. Navigation allows these different versions to be
displayed simultaneously in a variety of forms.

Thus, Electronic Beowulf is in fact six different Beowulfs. These
various texts are from many different locations. Thorkelin's
transcriptions are now in the Royal Library of Denmark, while the
Madden version is in the Houghton Library at Harvard University.
Only the Cotton Vitellius A xv manuscript and now the Conybeare
transcriptions are located in the British Library, the latter only
being acquired in 1994. Never before have all these texts been
available in one country, let alone in one place. Now, not only
can they be studied together, but they have been brought together
in an environment that makes comparison a simple matter and which
incorporates the results of sophisticated analytical techniques.

The effort to achieve this has been phenomenal, but the result is
truly staggering. Beowulf scholars and students of Old English now
have unimaginable riches at their fingertips.

I only wish I were such a scholar. There is a sense that while all
these Beowulfs might be considerably more available, they remain
as inaccessible as ever. For example, it seems truly remarkable
that a volume so carefully designed, with several versions of the
text and a dictionary, should be supplied without a simple
translation of the text. It would not only be helpful for the
interested amateur (or the list of cross-disciplinary scholars
described in the introductory blurb accompanying the CD), but it
could indeed support an interesting exercise in its own right.
Comparing the text(s) to translation would demonstrate the
necessity to return to source texts for an informed historical
interpretation. Regrettably, Electronic Beowulf is only for those
students of Anglo-Saxon culture already thoroughly
steeped in the written language, not for historians or
archaeologists who want to expand their knowledge. It is certainly
not going to enthrall or enlighten the public, let alone make them
better citizens. "


(The above review by:
William Kilbride,
Dept of Archaeology,
University Of York,
England )


 Seigmundr

sig wrote:
>
> Wow, Troels,
>
> Thank you for that one! For all Beowolf buffs this new CD ought to
> become a must:
>
>                      The Electronic Beowulf
>                      Kevin S. Kiernan
>                      2000
>                      CD-ROM
>                      0-472-00260-0    $150.00NET    Available
>                      UMP Product Code: 00260
(..)

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]


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