Ancient Web: Benjamin Slade Set Beowulf in Parallel Columns

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.

Old English is not the easiest language to read on a computer screen. Benjamin Slade tackled the problem with an early-Web answer: two columns, careful line numbers, and a few clickable sounds.

Visit the Beowulf text and facing translation

Slade's Beowulf on Steorarume—translated on its own opening page as Beowulf in Cyberspace—presents the poem with its Old English text beside an English translation. The site's entrance credits Dr. Benjamin Slade as editor and even recommends a screen resolution of 1024 by 768 or higher. You are entering a scholarly project from a period when a desktop monitor was part of the assumed reading environment.

Individual sections carry copyright notices dated 2002–2005 and acknowledge the British Library's permission for the manuscript images. The pages also invite readers to click a lyre icon to hear selected readings in Old English. That is an ambitious combination for its time: text, translation, manuscript context, and a voice.

Grendel gets his own line numbers

The eleventh section begins with Grendel emerging from the mist and entering the hall. The paired lines let a reader move between the poem's inflected Old English and a translation that often preserves its word order and rhythm rather than sanding everything down into a modern paraphrase.

The number 711 appears alongside Grendel's approach; 741 marks the moment he attacks a sleeping warrior; by the late 760s he is discovering that Beowulf's grip is not a routine occupational hazard.

A learner can follow the battle in English while returning to particular words in the original. The physical shape of the text matters here. A modern summary of the plot would be much easier to consume, and far less useful for someone trying to study the poem.

Another section of the edition carries a later update notice, evidence that these pages were maintained as a work rather than uploaded once and abandoned. The present domain's hosting arrangement has also changed, but the old side-by-side text remains available.

This is the scholarly side of the ancient Web at its best. Nobody had to invent a proprietary reading platform. An editor needed a set of ordinary pages that could hold a medieval poem open in two languages.

Read Grendel's entrance in the parallel-text edition.

Part of the Ancient Web Collection.