Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary is a prose translation of the early medieval epic poem "Beowulf" from Old English to modern English language. Translated by J. R. R. Tolkien from 1920 to 1926, it was edited by Tolkien's son Christopher and published posthumously in May 2014 by HarperCollins. In the poem, Beowulf, a hero of the Geats in Scandinavia, comes to the aid of Hroðgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by a monster known as Grendel. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother attacks the hall and is
Beowulf (hero) attested to a monk from Durham and literally means "bee wolf" in Northumbrian. The 11th century English "Domesday Book" contains a recorded instance of the name "Beulf". A scholar named Sarrazin also suggested that the name "Beowulf" was derived from a mistranslation of "Böðvarr" where -"varr" was interpreted as "vargr" meaning "wolf". However, this etymology was questioned by Sophus Bugge, who instead suggested that the personage Böðvarr Bjarki was derived from Beowulf. In 2005, Andy Orchard theorized an etymology on the basis of the common Old Norse name "Þórólfr" (which literally translates to "Thor Wolf"), stating in parallel that a