British translator, poet, academic and broadcaster (1941–2023)
Michael Joseph Alexander (21 May 1941 – 5 November 2023) was a British translator, poet, academic and broadcaster. He held the Berry Chair of English Literature at the University of St Andrews until his retirement in 2003. He is best known for his translations of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poems into modern English verse.[1]
For many years he was a member of the Scottish team in Radio 4's Round Britain quiz show.
Alexander died on 5 November 2023, at the age of 82.[3][4]
Beowulf translation
Alexander stated that his verse translation of Beowulf imitated the form of the original, "stimulated by the example of Ezra Pound's version of [the Old English poem] 'The Seafarer'".[5] The scholar Hugh Magennis calls Alexander's translation "accessible but not reductive", notes that it sold "hundreds of thousands" of copies and that it was liked by both students and teachers, and devotes a whole chapter of his book on translating Beowulf to it.[6]
Works
Criticism, scholarship, educational
The Poetic Achievement of Ezra Pound (1979)
York Notes on Geoffrey Chaucer's "Prologue to the Canterbury Tales" (1999, with Mary Alexander)
A History Of English Literature (2000, 2007, 2013)
A History of Old English Literature (2002)
Mediaevalism: The Middle Ages in Modern England (2007)
Reading Shakespeare (2013)
Poetry
Twelve Poems (1978)
Editions
Beowulf: A Glossed Text (1995, revised 2000)
Translations
The Earliest English Poems (1966, revised 1977, 1991)
Beowulf: A Verse Translation (1973, revised 2001)
Old English Riddles from the Exeter Book (1980, revised 2007)
References
^"St. Andrews faculty page".
^Biographical information at front of The Earliest English Poems translated by Michael Alexander, Penguin Classics, 1972 reprint
^"Professor Michael Joseph Alexander". The Times. 14 November 2023. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
^"Michael Joseph Alexander". Much Loved. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
^Alexander, Michael J. (29 May 2014). "Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary review – JRR Tolkien's long-lost translation". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 November 2020.
^Magennis, Hugh (2011). Translating Beowulf : modern versions in English verse. Cambridge Rochester, New York: D.S. Brewer. pp. 135–159. ISBN 978-1-84384-394-8. OCLC 883647402.