Beowulf and the Critics
J.R.R. Tolkien
Edited by Michael D.C. Drout
2011 Revised Second Edition
Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Tempe, Arizona
ISBN-10: 086698450X
ISBN-13: 9780866984508
Hardcover
xxvi, 486 pp.
Not illustrated
Tolkien Collector Ref.: Issue no. 32, p. 5
Notes
Volume 402 in the Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies series.
Beowulf and the Critics was written in the 1930s and was probably delivered as a series of lectures to undergraduates. Tolkien’s highly influential lecture, Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics, was a redaction of this work. This edition of Tolkien’s lecture series includes both versions of the text together with detailed explanatory notes.
Also included are two versions of the poem Iumonna Gold Galdre Bewunden (previously published in 1923 and 1937 respectively) along with an intermediate version (printed twice, the first time without the final stanza).
Along with corrections, revisions and aesthetic alterations, new additions to the text of the Second Edition “include a mostly complete identification of the various scholars Tolkien alludes to in the ‘Babel of voices’ in ‘Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,’ a tabular illustration of the ways the original lecture drafts evolved into the published British Academy lecture, and… the text of notes Tolkien made in preparation for the B-Text of the lecture” (xiii).
Not reprinted? Available new.
RRP: $58.00.