Beowulf

Fascinating Tale, Beautiful Yet Difficult to Comprehend Sometimes; Excellent Edition

I'm of two minds about Beowulf.

One: The poetic flow of this edition is absolutely beautiful. It's silky-smooth, engrossing, and incredibly easy to read. The footnotes in each chapter serve well to explain certain anachronisms or confusing wordings - and to disambiguate characters when merely pronouns are used. I had no trouble reading this in terms of flow and word choices.

Two: Despite the beautiful poetic flow and helpful footnotes, I still highly doubt I'd have understood half of what was going on if I hadn't read the children's novel version from Wishbone first. My brain and long sentences with creative structures just don't get along - at least insofar as comprehension is concerned.

How do I translate that into a rating? Well, I know I enjoyed the story itself when I read a prose-based retelling. And I know I had fun reading the poem version, even if I struggled a bit with comprehension. I will admit, however, I think I accidentally skimmed - or turned my brain off when reading, maybe - several times, when there wasn't much going on to hold full attention. This happens to me with poetry in general, so I don't feel right faulting Beowulf for it.

I do think it was a touch too long and the plot a little convoluted, but... it's not bad. It's not the best thing ever, but it's not bad. I don't regret spending the night reading this. Thus, I think I'm gonna go with three stars. I like it, but don't love it. And this particular edition is well-formatted with useful information.

Compared to other books I read for this class it wasn't as bad. That being said I wouldn't go out of my way to reread it. I'm not a fan of the heroic epics and this one didn't make me like them.