“The edition I got from the library was not the complete edition which has been most recently published (also including "On Fairy-stories", "English and Welsh", "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", "On Translating Beowulf", "A Secret Vice" (about imaginary languages), and an Oxford Valedictory address), but an old library edition containing only the title essay. This work on the Beowulf poem was itself very fascinating, although I would have liked to read the others as well. In it Tolkien explores and defends the poem, urging readers to look at it not as a historical document but as what it actually is -- a poem, a work of art, and a work of story. He claims that Beowulf, contrary to the views of most of his predecessors, puts the primary things in the center and the secondary things at the edges, in creating for its hero foes against which he could both prove his valor and meet a tragic ending. Using evil monsters for this purpose, Tolkien argued, put Beowulf's struggle not in the arena of human striving, but in a larger drama of good vs. evil, a drama which gives meaning and purpose to human life. I would recommend this book mainly to hardcore Tolkien fans, something I haven't said before even of his more obscure works. But this is academia, not story, and so only those interested not only in story but in subject should here proceed. ”
Michael wrote this review Saturday, March 21 2009.
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