Here is a riddling maze never seen before, a murder mystery of smoke and mirrors that will intrigue and entertain new readers and aficionados alike. — Robert E. Bjork, Editor of Klaeber’s Beowulf and A Beowulf Handbook
Editorial Praise
Chris Vinsonhaler’s exciting new translation of Beowulf is a groundbreaking work, combining taut renderings of the Old English verse with succinct and insightful commentary to guide the reader through this famously challenging text. The innovative division of the text into passages of narrative voice (the story) and reflective voice (the narrator speaking to the audience) brings into focus the moralistic and dramatic dimensions of this strange but endlessly fascinating poem. Most strikingly, Vinsonhaler presents startling new evidence for the poem’s ‘enigmatic design’, in which the presentation of ‘good kings’ such as Beowulf and Hrothgar is repeatedly complicated by allusions to kin-murder, vengeance, the sacking of mead halls, and the lust for treasure, bringing these seemingly admirable characters ever closer to the world of the monsters they confront. — Francis Leneghan, Professor, Old English, University of Oxford
“Chris Vinsonhaler leverages her work in performance and scholarship to reveal major elements obscured in Beowulf’s long critical history: how repetition sparks subtle yet essential impacts; how the poem’s riddling design leaves insinuation hanging; how the sonic landscape of each line draws us into the folds of enigma; and most intriguing of all, how the poem mobilizes irony to flesh out its shockingly honest invocation of heroic criminality. This is absolutely not a Beowulf of epic praise but a scathing exposé of avarice, cultural nostalgia, and the perennial allure of violence.” — Ophelia Eryn Hostetter, Professor of Old English, Rutgers University, Camden, Editor of Teaching Beowulf: Practical Approaches
“Chris Vinsonhaler’s highly original rendition is much more than a translation of Beowulf. It invites the reader on a lively ride into the otherworld of the early medieval imagination—where darkness battles light, where our demons can devour us, and where things are never quite what they seem.” — Daniel Anlezark, Professor of Old English, University of Sydney, Author, Water and Fire: The Myth of the Flood in Anglo-Saxon England
Chris Vinsonhaler’s new translation of Beowulf is a bold and risky venture. She has thrown down a challenge to those who (think they) know this complex and mysterious poem with a reading that goes completely against the grain: it confirms our suspicions that heroes and monsters are disturbingly similar, and more controversially, depicts the Scandinavian characters—including Beowulf himself—as deceitful and rapacious murderers, making traditional understandings of the poem look naive. The innovative layout, with bite-sized sections of vibrantly translated text interspersed with commentary and thoughtful separation of the poem’s performative voices, does a great job of clarifying Vinsonhaler’s incisive reading of Beowulf as a “labyrinth of interlacing riddles.” This is essential—and bracing—reading. — Heather O’Donoghue, Professor Emerita, Norse-Icelandic Literature, University of Oxford
Praise for Vinsonhaler’s Translation and Performance
“Chris Vinsonhaler’s translation bristles with an energy and enthusiasm that is both captivating and infectious. While existing versions (including those of a Nobel Laureate, academics, and widely-published poet) tend to stultify and strait-jacket the poem, making it seem somber and distant, this first truly dramatic rendering amply transmits the passion and verve of the original.” — Andy Orchard, Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon, University of Oxford, Author of Pride and Prodigies and A Critical Companion to Beowulf
“Chris Vinsonhaler, a bold and subtle critic of this poem, has produced a translation (2004) for our times: grief-stricken and appalled by bloody wars waged for the ’glittering loot,’ which in the end lies buried beneath a monument, ’useless, as it was before.’ Her ear, attuned to the richer beauty and greater cogency of an ironic reading, has taught her to translate the poem’s dark music as a rejection of the value of death; her radical interpretation strikes this reader as not only true but necessary.” — Mary Baine Campbell, Professor Emerita, Brandeis University, Author of Wonder & Science: Imagining Worlds in Early Modern Europe
“If the recent success of The Lord of the Rings trilogy tells us anything, it is that the mentality of Anglo-Saxon culture still speaks deeply to us. In her compelling performance, Chris Vinsonhaler captures the radical poetics of this powerful text. She gives us Beowulf, not as a stuffy philological exercise, but as a vivid experience—by turns heroic, ironic, and darkly comic—that shakes us and leaves us pondering.” — Christopher McDonough, Alderson-Tillinghast Chair in the Humanities, University of the South, Sewanee
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