Kemble’s Beowulf and Heaney’s Beowulf
Kemble’s Beowulf and Heaney’s Beowulf

Summary/Abstract: I compare the translations of Beowulf made by John Mitchell Kemble and by Seamus Heaney. Kemble published the first translation of Beowulf into Modern English in 1837, whereas Seamus Heaney’s translation (first published in 1999) came after almost seventy translations of Beowulf into English had been made. Kemble was also one of the first editors of Beowulf, and many of his emendations are still accepted today. On the whole, his prose translation is quite good, although he uses an archaizing language that was, however, common in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Heaney, on the other hand, made a fresh start. His translation is a poetic recreation; mostly he uses Modern English standard language, but he also incorporates in his translation colloquial language as well as words from Gaelic and Old English words surviving in English dialects, and he distinguishes stylistic levels: in his translation courtly speech is more elevated and formal than other kinds of language.

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