Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Old English epic poem Beowulf is written in alliterative verse.. In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. [1]
Old English literature has had some influence on modern literature, and notable poets have translated and incorporated Old English poetry. Well-known early translations include Alfred, Lord Tennyson 's translation of The Battle of Brunanburh , William Morris 's translation of Beowulf , and Ezra Pound 's translation of The Seafarer .
Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is Beowulf , but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition.
Some of the most recent analysis proposes that the traditional four-stress model of both Old English and Middle English alliterative verse is a "misapprehension" [9] and that a focus on other apparent rules clarifies the evolution of the form, with Layamon's Brut emerging as a key text in the development of alliterative verse. [9]
Alliteration is used in the alliterative verse of Old English poems like Beowulf, Middle English poems like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Old Norse works like the Poetic Edda, and in Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Irish. [3] It was also used as an ornament to suggest connections between ideas in classical Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit poetry.
Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature.
Alliteration is the repetition of letters or letter-sounds at the beginning of two or more words immediately succeeding each other, or at short intervals; or the recurrence of the same letter in accented parts of words. Alliteration and assonance played a key role in structuring early Germanic, Norse and Old English forms of poetry.
The corpus of Old English literature is small but still significant, with some 400 surviving manuscripts. [54] ... English poetry is based on stress and alliteration.