Epic of Beowulf Essay - Prosody of Beowulf -- Epic Beowulf essays

rhythmic pattern of Beowulf The poetic rhythm of Beowulf is the invention of Old English versification, made to be chanted orally, not show silently. Therefore it uses alliteration and accent to achieve the poetic effect which forward-looking English poetry achieves through the use of poetic feet, all(prenominal) having the identical number of syllables and the same pattern of accent (Wilkie 1271). Theory on the prosody of Beowulf is evolving. In the manuscript version of the verse form, alliteration is employed in close to every decipher (or two half-lines) in most modern translations of the poem this is not so. In lines 4 and 5 of the poem we find often Scyld Scefing sceapena preatum m angiotensin converting enzymegum 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 meeter an aesthetic sense of rightness or pleasure. In 1958 two speech co mmunication scholars, Lehmann nd Tabusa, produced an alphabetized list of every alliterated word in the poem. wholeness translator, Kevin Crossley-Holland, in his rendition of the poem in Literature of the Western World, very includes considerable alliteration (Wilkie 1271). The Old English poet would tie the two half-lines in concert by their stressed alliteration (Chickering 4). The first half-line is called the on-verse, which is followed by the off-verse. Each line of poetry ideally contains four principal stresses, two on each side of a strong medial caesura, or pause, and a protean number of less-heavily stressed or unstressed ones. At least one of the two stressed words in the first half-line, and usually both of them, begin with the same sound as t... ...ed by Joseph F. Tuso. New York, W.W.Norton and Co. 1975. Kiernan, Kevin S.. The bequest of Wiglaf, In The Beowulf Reader, edited by Peter S. Baker. New York Garland publication, 2000. Magoun, Frances P. Oral-Formulaic address of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry. In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewood 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, northeast Uiversity of Nebraska Press, 1997. Tharaud, Barry. Anglo-Saxon Language 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.