Beowulf, Michael Alexander
Beowulf, Michael Alexander
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Beowulf

Author: Michael Alexander, Michael Alexander, Unknown

Narrator: Royce Pierreson, Roy McMillan

Unabridged: 4 hr 40 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 03/25/2021


Synopsis

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Royce Pierreson, star of Line of Duty, Our Girl and The Witcher. This definitive recording includes an introduction by Michael Alexander.

Beowulf is the greatest surviving work of literature in Old English, unparalleled in its epic grandeur and scope. It tells the story of the heroic Beowulf and of his battles, first with the monster Grendel, who has laid waste to the great hall of the Danish king Hrothgar, then with Grendel's avenging mother, and finally with a dragon that threatens to devastate his homeland. Through its blend of myth and history, Beowulf vividly evokes a twilight world in which men and supernatural forces live side by side. And it celebrates the endurance of the human spirit in a transient world.

"Alexander's translation is marked by a conviction that it is possible to be both ambitious and faithful [and] ...communicates the poem with a care which goes beyond fidelity-to-meaning and reaches fidelity of implication. May it go on ... to another half-million copies." - Tom Shippey, Bulletin of the International Association of University Professors of English

© Michael Alexander 2003 (P) Penguin Audio 2021

Reviews

Goodreads review by Anne on October 13, 2025

I vaguely remembered reading this in 7th grade and thought it might be fun to grab the audio version of one of the most important works of Ye Olde English literature. I listened to this twice the other day and then realized a funny thing: Beowulf is basically every 80's action movie ever made. It's tr......more

Goodreads review by Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽ on April 16, 2021

As a college English major, I studied Beowulf without any great enthusiasm; my real love was for the Romantic poets. And Chaucer, but that might have been partly because I thought it was hilarious that we were studying such bawdy material at BYU. Plus you can still puzzle out The Canterbury Tales in......more

Goodreads review by Nicole on May 09, 2023

Those of you looking for a precise, age-old translation of Beowulf need to go back to Heaney. This is no timeless classic, this is no pretentious, literary snobbery made to bore high school sophomores. This is living, breathing poetry as it's meant to be, rooted in the language of then and the langu......more

Goodreads review by James on April 23, 2017

Beowulf is thought to have been written around the year 1000 AD, give or take a century. And the author is the extremely famous, very popular and world renowned writer... Unknown. Got you there, didn't I? LOL Probably not... if you're on Goodreads and studied American or English literature, you prob......more

Goodreads review by Brett on May 02, 2021

This is a reread from my high school days. It was fun to reengage with this epic poem. This particular edition is bilingual with Old English on the left and modern English on the right. So technically that cuts the book length in half but does not take away from the story. The poem blends lots of el......more


Quotes

Michael Alexander is much the best translator from Old English. His Penguin Beowulf is much to be recommended