Abstract

There seems to be a broad academic consensus in identifying the earliest contributions to Beowulfian studies from the Spanish speaking world. Conde Silvestre and Salvador, in their comprehensive review of Old English Studies in Spain (2007), refer to Madariaga’s comparative analysis of Beowulf and the Spanish epic El Cantar del Mio Cid (Shelley and Calderón; 1920) as a pioneering effort, “followed by the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges's Antiguas literaturas germánicas (1951), and the Chilean Orestes Vera Pérez's well-known translation of Beowulf into Spanish (1962)”. Marijane Osborn (1997) rightly dated Orestes’ first edition of the prose translations of Beowulf to 1959 and listed the less known adaptation of the poem for children published in 1934 (Vallvé). More recently, Eugenio Olivares Merino (2009) has reviewed in detail these and other early renderings and versions of Beowulf published in Spain by non- scholars of Old English.
The aim of this presentation is to consider the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, rather limited, reception of the poem in Spanish publications in search for translated words, lines and passages that predate both Orestes’s translation and Vallvé’s adaptation. These partial renderings from the Old English poem, often ignored in the specialised literature, appear in (un) expected places which deserve to be explored in more depth.