Meme...

In an effort to force you all to post something, I've tagged all of you fellow Riddlers for the mutated medieval meme. You can find the details in my version of the meme, posted at PoKR. I know you're all busy, but I'm expecting good things from you all!

Sir Gawain and the Gush of Translations...

Today in my email I received a link to a new "innovative translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" by Adam Golaski (professor of creative writing at the University of Connecticut), which he has titled Green. So far, Golaski's released on section a month, started in December: here is fit one, part one; here is fit one, part two.

I also recently bought the new (and also acclaimed as innovative) translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Simon Armitage (W. W. Norton, 2007), and have so far read about the first fit.

Why all the surge of Sir Gawain? I don't know, but he (and his poem) seems to be gaining popularity in the public eye. Perhaps he'll start giving Beowulf a run for his money, although that might take a major motion picture release, and we haven't seen (or hear rumors of ) one of those since 1984 (film title: Sword of the Valiant: The Legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). I'm interested in people's thoughts on this: either about the growing popularity of the Middle English poem or about the translations. As Gawain himself would say, "Haf at þe þenne!"

[Cross-posted at Point of Know Return.]

This really does not belong here, but...

...I GOT MY DEGREE FROM HOUGHTON!

I'm officially out of there and smart and stuff, just like the rest of you!

[And post already, will you? I don't have anything to say right around this time.]

Finally read it! NotR

I am a lapsed novel reader, and every year at Christmas I promise to climb back on the wagon. For the second holiday season, Umberto Eco provided the means. This season, I finally read Name of the Rose. In the interest of keeping NYR (New Year's Resolution) 1--namely to post more on R47--and in hopes that the ensuing conversation might help encourage me to keep NYR2 (read more novels)--I'll make a brief post here.

Brandon, I remember you posting something somewhere about the book--could you provide a link? General reaction: I enjoyed the book and felt transported into the 14th century. (And I wanted to stay there, although I think the burning of the library may have totally undone me--I would have become a wandering mad mendicant.) Eco plays with a lot of things, and I lament my lack of Latin yet once more as it means I missed key issues that were at play. One theme that I enjoyed thinking about, and one that seems ever relevant, is the danger of certainty and the shifting sands of knowledge and justification. Both the philosophical issues (Aristotle, later Bacon, vs, Plato, Plotinus, Augustine) and the theological issues (the chronology of the attainment of the beatific vision, and the role of poverty in the life of Christ, the Church, the believer) are imminently current.

So what do you all recall/review from the book, and what did you make of it?

Happy new year!

May God continue grace us all with his love, patience and presence.
Stay warm, friends. Stay safe.

Follow-up re: Amazon's brain improvement tool

This is a follow-up post to Leslie's query about the Kindle. I think I agree with this commentary at The American Prospect. (And I am really loosing my luddite edge--which would be a blunt edge, I guess... I just figured out how to put a link in a post!) Be well!

Beowulf Movie...

Leslie has been asking me to post my thoughts on the new Beowulf movie, so I'm offering the following.

I saw Beowulf (the movie), but I'm hesitant to post any sort of review; there are already so many Anglo-Saxonist (and other medievalist) voices out there talking about it, I don't think I would add much to the many thoughts. I recommend reading a few that have sparked certain amounts of resonance with what I thought about the movie. Here are some names and links to their reviews and thoughts. Beware of plot spoilers.
Michael Drout
Dr. Virago
Jennifer Lynn Jordan (another newly acquainted blogging medieval studies grad student)

The review I most resonate with is Mary Kate Hurley's, over at ITM, not so much for its general perceptions, but for her discussion of what such an adaptation means for the long and continuing history of Beowulf. It's a beautiful post, with great reflections on the life of the poem. She's put into words some of the things I was searching for in my "Prevailing Poetry," and she says them better than I could.

I was was having a conversation with one of my friends in the English MA here at UConn about the Beowulf movie, which then moved into a discussion about translations. Toward the end of the conversation, he mentioned how fascinating it is to realize that we always go back to the Old English poem. Although we keep translating, over and over, those translations still need reworked after a time, the old renderings set aside, the new ones reworked for a new audience. He said that he thinks this was the goal of Seamus Heaney with his translation--to provide a new rendering that spoke to the audience of everyone, not only English majors who would read the poem but also anyone who wanted to pick up the poem and enjoy it. Then he hinted that, someday, even Heaney's translation will be set aside for a new one. But we will always return to the original text, the Anglo-Saxon words that still speak to us and fascinate us from over one thousand years ago. And I think that this life--the life of a poem that keeps speaking to us--is the one that MKH is alluding to in her post. That life is not ended. I especially think the last words of her post speak most powerfully of her reflections:

Maybe there's something yet to learn from this Beowulf, beyond Angelina Jolie's nudity and Beowulf's bad lines. Maybe it can speak to something more than the sum of the parts of the past it inherited. Maybe its resurrection at this cultural moment is itself of value. And maybe we're too close -- temporally, spiritually -- to see this movie for what it might be: another performance of a poem whose ending has not been written yet.

As to my own opinion about the movie, I mostly enjoyed it--as a movie. Walking into the theater, I set aside my critical nature as someone who dissects texts as well as my Anglo-Saxonist side, and I went in hoping to watch and enjoy a movie based upon a story I have loved since I was ten years old. As both a movie and an interpretation, of course it had flaws. Gaiman and Avery made interesting interpretive moves that clearly brought out certain parts of the poem, at the expense of certain other aspects. Of course, those moves also brought out certain aspects that were important to put into the movie. The central plot change--of the relationships between the monsters--helped to smooth over the poem into a more unified poem, with a plot line that moved with connections to everything previously--a sense found in the poem only in the character of Beowulf, not in the actual plot. Of course, this should have been expected, given the nature of plot-driven Hollywood films. I never expected a movie exactly corresponding to the poem; we can never expect that of a movie. But we can at least find certain merits (Grendel's mother playing a philological game with Beowulf's name, the integration of Christian and pagan elements, the postmodern questions about storytelling, to name just a few) for watching the movie and engaging in discussion about it.

[Cross-Posted at Point of Know Return.]