"I've long been waiting for a rendering ofBeowulfby someone sensitive to its muscular verse, its palette of irony that ranges from grim understatement to barely suppressed hilarity, its profound humanity and Christian faith. I'm waiting no longer -- Douglas Wilson's is the one, far more faithful to the original than Heaney's or Raffel's, and conceding absolutely nothing to theirs in sheer dramatic force. I will be ordering it for my students forthwith."
~ Anthony Esolen,translator of Dante'sDivine Comedy,
author ofTen Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child,
and professor of English at Providence College
"Douglas Wilson'sBeowulfconveys with admirable clarity the poem's narrative and general character, and his commentary helps the studious reader to see how the poem reflects a time of cultural conflict and change."
~ Richard Wilbur,United States Poet Laureate (1987),
two-time Pulitzer Prize winner,
and Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets
"It is obvious that Douglas Wilson enjoyed himself immensely in rendering this Old English epic into the alliterative verse form of the original, and as a reader I found that this enjoyment energized the text.Beowulfis a story par excellence, and the most salient trait of Wilson's version is that it flows beautifully."
~ Leland Ryken,professor of English at Wheaton College
and author ofThe Christian ImaginationÂ
and theChristian Guides to the Classicsseries
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