Epic of Beowulf Essay - Alliteration in Beowulf -- Epic Beowulf essays

Alliteration in Beowulf The diction of the Old English song Beowulf is distinguished primarily by its heavy use of allliteration, or the repeat of the initial pop offs of words. In the original manuscript version of the meter, alliteration is diligent in almost every source (or cardinal half-lines) in innovational translations of the poem this is not so. Beowulf uses alliteration my italics and accent to achieve the poetic printing which Modern English poetry achieves through the use of poetic feet, separately having the same number of syllables and the same pattern of accent (Wilkie 1271). In lines 4 and 5 of the poem we find Oft Scyld Scefing sceapena preatum monegum maegpum meodo-setla ofteah The repetition of the s sound in line 4 and of the m sound in line 5 illustrate alliteration, and this occurs throughout the poem, providing to the dispositionener an aesthetic sense of refinement or pleasure. In 1958 two language scholars, Lehmann nd Tabusa, produced an al phabetized list of every alliterated word in Beowulf. One translator, Kevin Crossley-Holland, in his rendition of the poem in Literature of the horse opera World, actually includes considerable alliteration, but slight than the original version of the poem (Wilkie 1271). The Old English poet would tie the two half-lines together by their stressed alliteration (Chickering 4). The first half-line is called the on-verse, which is followed by the off-verse. from each one line of poetry ideally contains four principal stresses, two on each side of a strong medial caesura, or pause, and a variable number of less-heavily stressed or unstressed ones. At least one of the two stresse... ...lishing, 2000. Magoun, Frances P. Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry. In TheBeowulf Poet, edit by Donald K. Fry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Renoir, Alain. Point of View and Design for Terror in Beowulf. In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewoo d Cliffs, NJ Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968. Stockwell, Robert. P. and Donka Minkova. Prosody In A Beowulf Handbook, edited by Robert Bjork and John D. Niles. Lincoln, Nebraska Uiversity of Nebraska Press, 1997. Tharaud, Barry. Anglo-Saxon delivery and Traditions in Beowulf. In Readings on Beowulf, edited by Stephen P. Thompson. San Diego Greenhaven Press,1998. Wilkie, Brian. Beowulf. Literature of the Western World, edited by Brian Wilkie and James Hurt. New York Macmillan Publishing Co., 1984.