Beowulf

Most important copied work and is an epic poem

Copied down as early as the 8th century from an older oral poem
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Probably by a priest working at a king's court

Only surviving Old English epic poem and the greatest surviving Germanic epic

Text is preserved in a single 10th-century manuscript
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Damaged by fire at the British Library in 1731 before a copy was made

Like most Anglo-Saxon poetry

-dark in tone contains
-little humor
-romance

A narrative that tells a story...

• Of either war or travel
• Features an epic hero who is larger than life
• An example of a cultural ideal

Old English poetic lines contain...

-Four accented syllables
-Variable number of unaccented syllables
-Often contain a pause in the middle (a medial caesura)

Does not use rhyme or stanzas (subsidiary groups of lines)
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Uses Alliteration
-repetition in succeeding words of consonant or vowel sounds anywhere in the word

Uses Two Literary Devices

Understatement
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Involves saying things in a way that minimizes their actual importance

For example, people being "put to sleep with the sword" is an understatement for saying they have been killed

Kenning
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Two-word metaphor used characteristically to describe something or someone

For example, sometimes the ocean is described as the "whale's road"

References

Greenblatt, S. (Ed.) (2006). The Norton anthology of English literature (8th ed., Vol. A). New York: W.W. Norton.

Harmon, W., & Holman, H. (2006) A handbook to literature. (10th ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall.