{"product_id":"9780008465827_the-battle-of-maldon-itogether-withi-the-homecoming-of-beorhtnoth","title":"The Battle of Maldon: \u003ci\u003eTogether With\u003c\/i\u003e The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFirst ever standalone edition of one of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most important poetic dramas, that explores timely themes such as the nature of heroism and chivalry during war, and which features unpublished and never-before-seen texts and drafts.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn 991 AD, vikings attacked an Anglo-Saxon defence-force led by their duke, Beorhtnoth, resulting in brutal fighting along the banks of the river Blackwater, near Maldon in Essex. The attack is widely considered one of the defining conflicts of tenth-century England, due to it being immortalised in the poem, \u003cem\u003eThe Battle of Maldon\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWritten shortly after the battle, the poem now survives only as a 325-line fragment, but its value to today is incalculable, not just as an heroic tale but in vividly expressing the lost language of our ancestors and celebrating ideals of loyalty and friendship.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eJ.R.R. Tolkien considered \u003cem\u003eThe Battle of Maldon\u003c\/em\u003e ‘the last surviving fragment of ancient English heroic minstrelsy’. It would inspire him to compose, during the 1930s, his own dramatic verse-dialogue, \u003cem\u003eThe Homecoming of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s Son\u003c\/em\u003e, which imagines the aftermath of the great battle when two of Beorhtnoth’s retainers come to retrieve their duke’s body.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLeading Tolkien scholar, Peter Grybauskas, presents for the very first time J.R.R. Tolkien’s own prose translation of \u003cem\u003eThe Battle of Maldon\u003c\/em\u003e together with the definitive treatment of \u003cem\u003eThe Homecoming of Beorhtnoth\u003c\/em\u003e and its accompanying essays; also included and never before published is Tolkien’s bravura lecture, ‘The Tradition of Versification in Old English’, a wide-ranging essay on the nature of poetic tradition. Illuminated with insightful notes and commentary, he has produced a definitive critical edition of these works, and argues compellingly that, \u003cem\u003eBeowulf\u003c\/em\u003e excepted, \u003cem\u003eThe Battle of Maldon\u003c\/em\u003e may well have been ‘the Old English poem that most influenced Tolkien’s fiction’, most dramatically within the pages of \u003cem\u003eThe Lord of the Rings\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"J R R Tolkien","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46898317951125,"sku":"9780008465827","price":39.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0484\/3175\/9509\/files\/9780008465827_d3aacb26-ca50-4e81-a3b9-b7ea3bb6ea32.jpg?v=1776888140","url":"https:\/\/harpercollins.com.au\/products\/9780008465827_the-battle-of-maldon-itogether-withi-the-homecoming-of-beorhtnoth","provider":"HarperCollins AU","version":"1.0","type":"link"}