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Search - SparkNotes: Beowulf

SparkNotes Beowulf
Author: SparkNotes Editors, Anonymous

SparkNotes Covers Everything --context; plot overview; character lists; themes, motifs, and symbols; summary and analysis, key facts; study questions and essay topics; and reviews and resources--you don't have to go anywhere else! — Old English Poetry — Beowulf is often referred to as the first important work of literature in English, even though ... more »it was written in Old English, an ancient form of the language that slowly evolved into the English now spoken. Compared to modern English, Old English is heavily Germanic, with little influence from Latin or French. As English history developed, after the French Normans conquered the Anglo-Saxons in 1066, Old English was gradually broadened by offerings from those languages. Thus modern English is derived from a number of sources. As a result, its vocabulary is rich with synonyms. The word kingly, for instance, descends from the Anglo-Saxon word cyning, meaning king, while the synonym royal comes from a French word and the synonymregal from a Latin word.

Fortunately, most students encountering Beowulf read it in a form translated into modern English. Still, a familiarity with the rudiments of Anglo-Saxon poetry enables a deeper understanding of the Beowulf text. Old English poetry is highly formal, but its form is quite unlike anything in modern English. Each line of Old English poetry is divided into two halves, separated by a caesura, or pause, and is often represented by a gap on the page, as the following example demonstrates:

Setton him to heafdon hilde-randas. . . .

Because Anglo-Saxon poetry existed in oral tradition long before it was written down, the verse form contains complicated rules for alliteration designed to help scops, or poets, remember the many thousands of lines they were required to know by heart. Each of the two halves of an Anglo-Saxon line contains two stressed syllables, and an alliterative pattern must be carried over across the caesura. Any of the stressed syllables may alliterate except the last syllable; so the first and second syllables may alliterate with the third together, or the first and third may alliterate alone, or the second and third may alliterate alone. For instance:

Lade ne letton. Leoht eastan com.

Lade, letton, leoht, and eastan are the four stressed words.

In addition to these rules, Old English poetry often features a distinctive set of rhetorical devices. The most common of these is the kenning, used throughout Beowulf. A kenning is a short metaphorical description of a thing used in place of the thing's name; thus a ship might be called a "sea-rider" or a king a "ring-giver." Some translations employ kennings almost as frequently as they appear in the original. Others moderate the use of kennings in deference to a modern sensibility. But the Old English version of the epic is full of them, and they are perhaps the most important rhetorical device present in Old English poetry.

ISBN-13: 9781586634056
ISBN-10: 1586634054
Publication Date: 1/10/2002
Pages: 80
Rating:

Currently 4.8/5 Stars.

4.8 stars, based on 2 ratings

Publisher: SparkNotes
Book Type: Paperback
Members Wishing: 0
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Literature & Fiction >> Classics >> Medieval
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Search - SparkNotes: Beowulf

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