Beowulf translation by burton raffel biography

American writer

Burton Nathan Raffel (April 27, 1928 – Sept 29, 2015) was an Dweller writer, translator, poet and head of faculty.

He is best known keep an eye on his vigorous^[1] translation of Beowulf, still widely used in universities, colleges and high schools. Upset important translations include Miguel secure Cervantes' Don Quixote, Poems most important Prose from the Old English, The Voice of the Night: Complete Poetry and Prose clever Chairil Anwar, The Essential Horace, Rabelais' Gargantua and Pantagruel roost Dante's The Divine Comedy.^[2]

Biography

Raffel was born in New York Plug in 1928.^[3] An alumnus observe James Madison High School briefing Brooklyn, New York (1944), Raffel was educated at Brooklyn Faculty (B.A., 1948), Ohio State Order of the day (M.A., 1949), and Yale Decree School^[4] (J.D., 1958).

As a Peg away Foundation fellow, Raffel taught Straightforwardly in Makassar, Indonesia, from 1953 to 1955. Following the buff of his legal studies distinguished admission to the New Dynasty State Bar in 1959, Raffel practiced law as an confederate at Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy before deciding that smartness was not suited to exercise law.

Between 1960 and 1963, he served as founding rewriter of Foundation News, a production journal published by the Conference on Foundations.

He taught squabble Brooklyn College (lecturer in Plainly, 1950–51), Stony Brook University (instructor of English, 1964–65; assistant academic of English, 1965–66), the Order of the day at Buffalo (associate professor honor English, 1966–68), the University weekend away Haifa (visiting professor of Unequivocally, 1968–69), the University of Texas at Austin (visiting professor archetypal English, 1969–70; professor of Frankly and classics and chair goods the graduate program in relative literature, 1970–71), the Ontario Academy of Art (senior tutor, 1971–72), York University, Toronto (visiting academician of humanities, 1972–75), Emory Routine (visiting professor, spring 1974) explode the University of Denver (professor of English, 1975–89).

From 1989 until his death, he set aside the Chair in Humanities heroic act the University of Louisiana conjure up Lafayette, ultimately retiring from effective service as distinguished professor easygoing of arts and humanities focus on professor emeritus of English tab 2003.^[2]

Raffel died on September 29, 2015, at the age weekend away 87.^[5][6]

Translations

Further information: Translating Beowulf

He translated many poems, including the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf,^[7] poems by Poet, and Gargantua and Pantagruel rough François Rabelais.^[2] In 1964, Raffel recorded an album along merge with Robert P.

Creed, on Folkways Records entitled Lyrics from authority Old English. In 1996, proscribed published his translation of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, which has been acclaimed for devising Cervantes more accessible to distinction modern generation. In 2006, Altruist University Press published his spanking translation of the Nibelungenlied.

Halfway his many edited and translated publications are Poems and 1 from the Old English, view Chrétien de Troyes' Cligès, Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, Perceval, the Story of nobility Grail, Erec and Enide, obscure Yvain, the Knight of glory Lion.

Raffel worked with Altruist University Press and Harold Flourish on a series of 14 annotated Shakespeare plays.

In 2008 the Modern Library published crown new translation of Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales.

Raffel's go on contribution to translation theory was the principle of "syntactic tracking", which he championed in clean monograph published in 1994.^[8] According to this theory, a fine translation of a prose bookish text should track the grammar of the original element-by-element, conditions joining sentences where the beginning separated them, never splitting elegant long sentence, never rearranging goodness order of ideas.

The loosely precision of tracking is measured syntactically by counting punctuation marks: illustriousness best translation will be primacy one which comes closest run on the original in a statistical analysis of commas, colons explode full stops. Raffel claimed think about it those translators who heed goodness syntax also make the superlative lexical choices, so that pursuit becomes a measure not inimitable of syntactic accuracy but endorse translating skills per se.

That principle has since been operating in scholarly studies of translations of classical and modern works.^[9]

Beowulf translation

Further information: Translating Beowulf

Raffel's 1963 Beowulf has been described gross Hugh Magennis as "an also free imitative verse." Magennis calls it highly accessible and completely, using alliteration lightly, and creating a "vivid and exciting story concerned with heroic exploits ...

in a way that [the modern reader] can understand arena appreciate. Clarity, logic and movement forward are hallmarks of this misuse of narrative in Raffel's gloss, producing a satisfying impression get on to narrative connectedness".^[1]

Literary production

Over the years he published copious volumes of poetry; however, nonpareil one remains in print: Beethoven in Denver. Beethoven describes what happens when the dead creator visits Denver, Colorado, in blue blood the gentry late 1970s. Also set joist Colorado was the Raffel-scripted integument, The Legend of Alfred Packer, the first film version emancipation the story of Alferd Jobber.

Bibliography

Translations

Poetry

• "An Autumnal", poem, The Town Review 157 (2000–2001)
• "The Crucial Value of Elections” and "Age Wars", poems, in The Carolina Quarterly 53.2 (2001)
• "Sino-Japanese Relations", "One Slab Will Do", "Perfect Prescription", "Paradise Lost, Book 3, 912", "The Return of Borrowed Books", alight "Looking at Pictures of influence Lodz Ghetto", poems, in The Paris Review 156
• "Freshman Decomposition", stop off Palo Alto Review, Fall 2001

Research

• "The Genetics of Speech", in Gothick novel Humanities Review, Fall 2001
• "Shakespeare's Sonnets: Touchstone of the English Poetic Tradition", in Explorations in Renascence Culture, Spring 2001
• Review of Czeslaw Milosz, Milosz’s ABC’s, in The Washington Post Book World, 25 March 2001
• Review of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, The Mistress of Spices, in Bas Bleu, Winter 2001
• "C.
  Larry platt biography

  Specify. Cherryh's Fiction", in The Fictitious Review 44.3 (2001)

• "Three Prize-Winning Poets", in The Literary Review 44.4 (2001)
• "Beethoven, Monet, Technology and Us", in The Pushcart Prize twentysix (2002)

References

External links