Whoever the second reader was was incredible. No offense to the first person, he did well, but that second voice that ended around 16:40 was great. Alas I continue and thank any audio I'm lucky enough to find.
The first voice, the young voice, reads well, but the second one, an older guy, is THE SHIT. I love how the dialogue between Beowulf and the Danish watchman on the shore is nearly whispered.
Thank you for your time and effort in making this audio version. You read so well (!), and clearly enjoy your role and the story. During a short / non-serious hospital stay I read along with the book and annotated as I went. Wonderfully useful to feel like I plumbed the depth of this poem AND while not being very able to do anything else. I will now look at some of the other translations having got to grips with your delivery of Raffel's work. With sincere gratitude!
this is the dryest book i have ever read. like think of perpetually choking on overcooked, unseasoned chicken. this is the sensation I feel when reading this trashy book. like a sea turtle choking on a plastic straw. it's truly terrible.
This is an earlier legend that had fallen into the hands of a cultural manipulator who then interjected all sorts of fire and brimstone into it. Especially this version. To get to the original structure remove any mention of the bible then reattach the strands.
I notice that the christian language throws off the rhythm of the story and doesn't blend well with the themes it seems to be trying to espouse. It feels like a shame that the original versions are lost, but I can still manage to look past and get a picture of what it probably read like.
Academic papers on the subject disagree with the claim. Widespread academic belief is that the Christian themes were a part of the poem from the beginning. Christianity was robustly present and Anglo-Saxon culture earlier than was previously believed. Scholars argue that the baseline themes of the poem are overtly Christian. (Whitelock, Brodeur, Goldsmith, Wrenn, to name a few scholars of Old English folklore)
This is an opinion uninformed by any objective fact. It seems this way to you. There is no consensus on what was the "original structure of Beowulf." it's quite possible that the copy we have is of the original manuscript. What the legends looked like (or SOUNDED LIKE) is a matter of conjecture.
