scholarly journals The Fall of Arthur and The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún : A Metrical Review of Three Modern English Alliterative Poems

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-56
Author(s):  
Nelson Goering
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
The Other ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
Medieval Poetry ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Poetic Edda ◽  
Narrative Poems ◽  
Considerable Body

J.R.R. Tolkien produced a considerable body of poetry in which he used the traditional alliterative metre of Old Norse and Old English to write modern English verse. This paper reviews three of his longer narrative poems, published in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún and The Fall of Arthur, examining Tolkien’s alliterative technique in comparison to medieval poetry and to the metrical theories of Eduard Sievers. In particular, the two poems in The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, which are adapted from Old Norse material, show a number of metrical and poetic features reminiscent of Tolkien’s sources in the Poetic Edda. The Fall of Arthur, on the other hand, is in a style that is, in detail and in general, strongly reminiscent of Old English poetry. Throughout all these compositions, Tolkien employs a distinctive alliterative style, closely based on medieval and philological models, but adjusted according to the linguistic needs of modern English and to his own preferences.

Old English Poetry into Modern English Verse

1994 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 69-75
Author(s):  
M. J. Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
English Verse

XVII.—Recent Translations of Old English Poetry.

PMLA ◽  
1903 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-458
Author(s):  
James M. Garnett
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
William Morris ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Past

The desire was expressed some years ago that we might soon have in English a collection of translations of Old English poetry that might fill the place so well filled in German by Grein's Dichtungen der Angelsachsen. This desire is now in a fair way of accomplishment, and much has been done during the past ten years, the period embraced in this paper. As was naturally to be expected from the work previously done in criticism of both text and subject-matter, Beowulf has attracted more than ever the thoughts and efforts of translators, for we had in 1892 the rhythmical translation of Professor J. Lesslie Hall and the prose version of Professor Earle; in 1895 (reprinted in cheaper form in 1898) the poetical translation of William Morris and A. J. Wyatt, the editor of Beowulf; in 1901 the prose version of Dr. J. R. Clark Hall, author of A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary; and only the other day, in 1902, the handy prose version of Professor C. B. Tinker.

The origin of the Exeter Book of Old English poetry

1996 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 135-185 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Gameson
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Critical Edition ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Exeter Book ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Documentary Evidence ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Third ◽  
English Verse

Exeter, Cathedral Library, 3501, fols. 8–130, the celebrated Exeter Book of Old English Poetry, preserves approximately one-sixth of the surviving corpus of Old English verse, and its importance for the study of pre-Conquest vernacular literature can hardly be exaggerated. It is physically a handsome codex, and is of large dimensions for one written in the vernacular: c. 320 × 220 mm, with a written area of c. 240 × 160 mm (see pl. III). In contrast to many coeval English manuscripts, particularly those in the vernacular, there is documentary evidence for the Exeter Book's pre-Conquest provenance. Assuming it is identical with the ‘i mycel Englisc boc be gehwilcum þingum on leoðwisum geworht’ (‘one large English book about various things written in verse’) in the inventory of lands, ornaments and books that Leofric, bishop of Crediton then Exeter, had acquired for the latter foundation, then it has been at Exeter since the third quarter of the eleventh century. This, however, is at least three generations after the book was written, and it has generally been assumed that it originated else where. Identifying the scriptorium where the Exeter Book was made is clearly a matter of the greatest interest and importance. A recent, admirably thorough monograph has put forward a thought-provoking case for seeing Exeter itself as the centre responsible, and has proceeded to draw a range of literary and historical conclusions from this. The comprehensive new critical edition of the manuscript has favoured the thesis, and it has been echoed elsewhere. If correct, this is extremely valuable and exciting – but is it correct? The matter is of sufficient importance to merit further scrutiny.

Color in Old English Poetry

PMLA ◽  
1899 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-206
Author(s):  
William E. Mead
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
Old Norse ◽  
Entire Body ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
High Interest ◽  
Language And Literature ◽  
Color Sense ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Exhaustive Study

It is a somewhat singular fact that although students of our language and literature have been carefully gleaning their chosen fields and leaving scarcely any entirely new theme for investigation, there should remain practically untouched a subject of high interest and æsthetic importance,— I mean the use of color in poetry. To some extent the matter has attracted attention in the study of other literatures than ours. Critics often remark upon the brilliant color-sense of the Celtic poets and of the writers of the Old Norse sagas and poems. Gladstone devoted a long section of his Homeric Studies to the color-epithets in the Iliad and the Odyssey; and a German scholar, with characteristic thoroughness, has made an exhaustive study of the color-words in the entire body of the Latin and Greek classics. But an adequate investigation of the development of the color-sense in English poetry is yet to be written. I know of but one paper that treats the matter in any detail, and that paper is confessedly tentative and leaves the older periods untouched. As for color in Old English poetry, a few words by Professor March and a few more in a very rare paper by Dr. Sweet exhaust about all that has been said on the subject.

Old English poetic diction not in Old English verse or prose – and the curious case of Aldhelm's five athletes

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 99-131
Author(s):  
Mark Griffith
Keyword(s):  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Old English ◽  
Educational Development ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
The Sublime ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Poetic Diction ◽  
Poetic Texts ◽  
Significant Discovery

AbstractThree contexts characterized by the occasional appearance of Old English poetic diction outside of Old English poetry — debased verse, rhythmical prose, and prose passages with rhetorical heightening — have been surveyed by previous scholars, but no serious consideration has been given to the use of poetic lexis to be found in the surviving glosses and glossaries. The article first looks at some examples in these non-poetic texts of poetic words used as markers of the heroic, the elegiac, the sublime, the exotic and the monstrous, before moving on to a detailed analysis of a significant discovery. The glosses and glossary batches to Aldhelm's extended simile in De Virginitate comparing the educational development of Christian nuns to the exertions of various athletes display (when taken together) a unique cluster of poetic diction, comparable in density (and perhaps also in motivation) to that found only in the most enriched passages of traditional heroic poetry.

Kennings in Old English Verse and in the Poetic Edda

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-91
Author(s):  
Robert D. Fulk
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
The Other ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Skaldic Poetry ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Poetic Edda ◽  
Two Bodies ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract To shed light on questions pertaining to the similarities and differences between kennings in Old English and in the Poetic Edda, a survey is undertaken of the density of kenning use in the two corpora. The likeliest conclusion to be drawn from a comparison of findings is that the two poetic traditions are rather similar in regard to kenning use. In both traditions, kennings are notably simpler and less riddle-like than in skaldic poetry, though the Edda contains a few kennings of sufficient complexity to suggest skaldic influence. Although kennings, on average, occur more frequently in Old English, the incidence is broadly similar to that in the Poetic Edda. Kennings are not uncommonly explained by the use of variation (apposition) in Old English, but less commonly in the Edda, although the difference does not specifically suggest discrepant attitudes toward kenning use in the two traditions, since variation is rare in the Edda under all circumstances. Although the possibility of the influence of one tradition upon the other cannot be ruled out, the similarities, in the main, are probably best explained as the result of common inheritance. This explanation garners support from the number of instances in which more or less precise cognate kennings appear in the two bodies of literature.

Old English Poetic Superlatives

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-273
Author(s):  
E. G. Stanley
Keyword(s):  
Old English ◽  
First Century ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Aesthetic Response ◽  
General Survey ◽  
Aesthetic Quality ◽  
Old English Poetry ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Twenty First Century

AbstractThis paper is designed to show how difficult it is for us in the twenty-first century to establish a valid response to the superlative of adjectives as used in Old English verse. In contradistinction to the monochromatically excessive use of superlatives in modern advertising, the distribution of superlatives is very varied in the English verse of more than a thousand years ago. The first part of the paper consists of a general survey of Old English superlatives, chiefly in the vernacular verse of the Anglo-Saxons, but their prose has not been wholly neglected. The study is evaluative, more so than is usual in sober Linguistics; to this purpose the superlative degree and its statistics contribute to an understanding of the triumphant ending of Beowulf, and grammar is to be seen as the handmaiden of literature. The second part of the paper is more literary, and is based on the incidence of superlatives as presented in the first part. The density of superlatives in the opening of the minor poem Maxims II is observed, without any reasoning for that density. The density of rare superlatives in the last lines of Beowulf is admired for its aesthetic quality, brought out in Edwin Morgan’s poetic rendering of the poem. It is not forgotten that the rarity of a superlative in the extant verse may be because we cannot know if it would have been less rare had more verse survived. The reading of poetry must, if worthwhile, involve an aesthetic response. The paper, at the same time as exercising that response, stresses our insecurity when we respond to Old English poetry.

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