Item Added!

1 item in your Cart

Checkout

Book Condition: Used
ISBN: 0521393256 / 9780521393256
Seller: Paul Brown Books

United Kingdom
About Item: -Cambridge University Press, 1991-. First edition. Cambridge Studies in Anglo-Saxon England 5. xvi+318 pages with index. Cloth. Fine in like dustjacket. This book argues that the formal art of the Old English epic Beowulf is shaped and determined by the poetic language which the poet inherited from the traditional, oral culture of Anglo-Saxon England. The patterns of metre and alliteration exhibited in the poem were not imposed by the poet on his language, but were part of the language which he spoke, the rules of which constituted his metrical grammar. Professor Kendall investigates the constraints of syntax, metre and alliteration which govern the formal art of Beowulf. He shows how the half-lines of the poem, which are the basic units of composition, are marked by the metrical grammar for placement in the verse clause; he also establishes conditions for the presence or absence of alliteration, which enable him to say whether in any given instance the alliterative device is a mandatory function of… Read More
Quantity: 1