L'elmo di Beowulf al di là della Manica

Abstract, Dora Faraci Beowulf’s Helmet across the Channel In a passage of Hubert Pierquin's French translation (1912) of the Old English poem Beowulf, where helmets with boar (eofor or swin in Old English) ornaments are often mentioned, the word swin is surprisingly translated as cygne. The article investigates the possible reasons that might have led Pierquin to replace the figure of the boar, which is loaded with various meanings in the Germanic world, with that of the swan. The hypothesis is that Pierquin was influenced by the literary tradition of the Chevalier au cygne, the legendary ancestor of Godfrey of Bouillon, which had been revived in France thanks to Richard Wagner's Lohengrin. The opera enjoyed great success in France and was performed several times in the years Pierquin was working on the Beowulf translation. Moreover, the arrival and departure of mythical founders of dynasties on a ship joins the stories of the Knight of the Swan to Beowulf, thanks to Scyld Scefing, the mysterious ancestor of the Danish royal family.