Prelude

&ldquo;If you wish to translate, not rewrite Beowulf, your language must be literary and traditional: not because it is now a long while since the poem was made, or because it speaks of things that have since become ancient; but because the diction of Beowulf was poetical, archaic, artificial (if you will), in the day that the poem was made.&rdquo; — J. R. R. Tolkien, Beowulf: The Monsters and the…