The Old Norse Poetic Translations of Thomas Percy: A New Edition and Commentary

Thomas Percy was the first serious translator of Old Norse-Icelandic poetry into English. He published his "Five Pieces of Runic Poetry" in London in 1763 and in 1770 published his translation of Mallet's very influential work on early Scandinavian literature and culture as "Northern Antiquities" (with extensive annotations and additions by Percy himself). In publishing "Five Pieces," Percy was influenced by the success of Macpherson's first volume of Ossian poetry (1760) and his own wide-ranging interest in ancient, especially 'gothic' poetry. "Five Pieces" had a mixed reception and was never republished as a separate work, but reappeared as an appendix to the second edn. of "Northern Antiquities." Nevertheless, it was a seminal work in the history of reception and understanding of Old Norse poetry in Britain and it also has more general significance in our understanding of the development of the discipline of Old Norse-Icelandic studies. This work makes available to the modern scholarly community the work of one of the pioneers of the discipline and produces in easily accessible format a text that is currently only available as a rare book. The study comprises a facsimile of the 1763 edition, with facing-page notes to allow the modern reader to situate Percy's work in its intellectual context, together with an introduction on Percy himself, his work on Old Norse-Icelandic studies, and the contemporary context of the reception of Old Norse poetry in Britain (and to some extent in the rest of Europe). In addition, this study publishes eight other poetic translations (one from Old English and the others from Old Icelandic) that Percy completed about the same time as the translations now in "Five Pieces of Runic Poetry," but did not then publish, due to the restrictions of contemporary tolerance for demanding or difficult 'ancient' poetry. This publication reveals his full range as a translator for the first time.