Abstract
In Chap. 4, “Tolkien’s Fairy-Story Beowulfs (1926–1940s),” just as Tolkien rewrote the harsh “Story of Sigurd” as a fairy-story in The Hobbit, here Tolkien’s adaptations of Beowulf are explicitly marked by his desire to rewrite Beowulf as eucatastrophic, happily.
While Sellic Spell and the lays differ in nature and style from his Beowulf course translation of 1926, they all share one feature: the omission of Beowulf’s failure in the battle with the Dragon and his ultimate death as a result of his desire to prove finally heroic—in line with the necessity for a Tolkienian fairy-story. The chapter also compares his course notes and commentary on Beowulf to emphasize his own repurposing of the original Anglo-Saxon in translations that similarly reflect the personal Tolkien in line with his transformations of the epic in his fairy-story Beowulf adaptations.
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Chance, J. (2016). Tolkien’s Fairy-Story Beowulfs (1926–1940s). In: Tolkien, Self and Other. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39896-3_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-39896-3_4
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
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