Tom Birkett & Kirsty March-Lyons 
Translating Early Medieval Poetry 
Transformation, Reception, Interpretation

The essays here, united by their appreciation of the centrality of translation to the interpretation of the medieval past, add to our understanding of how the old is continually made anew


The first decades of the twenty-first century have seen an unprecedented level of creative engagement with early medieval literature, ranging from the long-awaited publication of Tolkien’s version of
Beowulf and the reworking of medieval lyrics by Ireland’s foremost poets to the adaptation of Eddic and Skaldic poetry for the screen. This collection brings together scholars and accomplished translators working with Old English, Old Norse and Medieval Irish poetry, to take stock of this extraordinary proliferation of translation activity and to suggest new ways in which to approach these three dynamic literary traditions. The essays in this collection include critical surveysof texts and traditions to the present day, assessments of the practice and impact of individual translators from Jorge Luis Borges to Seamus Heaney, and reflections on the particular challenges of translating poetic forms and vocabulary into different languages and media. Together they present a series of informed and at times provocative perspectives on what it means to ‘carry across’ early medieval poetry in our contemporary cultural climate.


Dr Tom Birkett is lecturer in Old English at University College Cork; Dr Kirsty March-Lyons is a scholar of Old English and Latin poetry and co-organiser of the Irish Research Council funded conference and translation project ‘
Eald to New’.


Contributors: Tom Birkett, Elizabeth Boyle, Hannah Burrows, Gareth Lloyd Evans, Chris Jones, Carolyne Larrington, Hugh Magennis, Kirsty March-Lyons, Lahney Preston-Matto, Inna Matyushina, Rory Mc Turk, Bernard O’Donoghue, Heather O’Donoghue, Tadhg Ó Síocháin, Bertha Rogers, M.J. Toswell.

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Introduction: From
Eald to New

From
Eald Old to New Old: Translating Old English Poetry in(to) the Twenty-first Century

Edwin Morgan’s Translations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry: Turning
Eald into New in English and Scots

Gains and Losses in Translating Old English Poetry into Modern English and Russian

Borges, Old English Poetry, and Translation Studies

‘Let
Beowulf now be a book from Ireland’: What Would Henryson or Tolkien Say?

The Forms and Functions of Medieval Irish Poetry and the Limitations of Modern Aesthetics

Aislinge Meic Conglinne: Challenges for Translator and Audience

Translating
Find and the Phantoms into Modern Irish

Reawakening Angantýr: English Translations of an Old Norse Poem from the Eighteenth Century to the Twenty-First

Translating and Retranslating the Poetic Edda

From Heroic Lay to Victorian Novel: Old Norse Poetry about Brynhildr and Thomas Hardy’s
The Return of the Native

Michael Hirst’s
Vikings and Old Norse Poetry

Afterword

Bibliography

A Translation of
Riddle 15 from the Exeter Book

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GARETH LLOYD EVANS is Lecturer in Medieval Literature at St Hilda’s College, Oxford.