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

modulation of Beowulf The metrics of Beowulf is the blind of Old English versification, made to be chanted orally, not suppose silently. Therefore it uses alliteration and accent to achieve the poetic effect which modernistic English poetry achieves through the use of poetic feet, each(prenominal) having the equivalent 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 poesy, alliteration is employed in around every creese (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 a great deal Scyld Scefing sceapena preatum m one(a)gum 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 hearer an aesthetic sense of rightness or pleasure. In 1958 two lyric scholars, Lehmann nd Tabusa, produced an alp habetized list of every alliterated word in the poem. virtuoso translator, Kevin Crossley-Holland, in his rendition of the poem in Literature of the Western World, rattling includes considerable alliteration (Wilkie 1271). The Old English poet would tie the two half-lines unitedly 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 shifting number of less-heavily stressed or unstressed ones. At least one of the two stressed words in the first half-line, and usually some(prenominal) 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 section 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, neon 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.