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While Old English epic poetry may bear some resemblance to Ancient Greek epics such as the Iliad and Odyssey, the question of if and how Anglo-Saxon poetry was passed down through an oral tradition remains a subject of debate, and the question for any particular poem unlikely to be answered with perfect certainty.
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.
The poet calls on Anglo-Saxon readers to recognize the imperfect aspects of their supposed Christian lifestyles. In other words, the poet is referencing their "Anglo-Saxon Heathenism". [159] In terms of the characters of the epic itself, Robinson argues that readers are "impressed" by the courageous acts of Beowulf and the speeches of Hrothgar.
Example axe blood-ember Blóðeisu: N: Einarr Skúlason, Øxarflokkr 7 battle spear-din N: Snorri Sturluson, Skaldskaparmal: blood dead-slave N: blood battle-sweat One reference for this kenning comes from the epic poem, Beowulf. As Beowulf is in fierce combat with Grendel's mother, he makes mention of shedding much battle-sweat. N: Beowulf ...
The Exeter Book riddles can be situated within a wider tradition of 'speaking objects' in Anglo-Saxon culture and have much in common with poems such as The Dream of the Rood and The Husband's Message and with artefacts such as the Alfred Jewel or the Brussels Cross, which endow inanimate things with first-person voices. [28]
The Wanderer is an Old English poem preserved only in an anthology known as the Exeter Book.It comprises 115 lines of alliterative verse.As is often the case with Anglo-Saxon verse, the composer and compiler are anonymous, and within the manuscript the poem is untitled.
It has been proposed that this poem demonstrates the fundamental Anglo-Saxon belief that life is shaped by fate. [16] In The Search for Anglo-Saxon Paganism (1975), Eric Stanley pointed out that Henry Sweet 's Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon Poetry in W. C. Hazlitt 's edition of Warton's History of English Poetry (1871), expresses a ...
The poem is preserved in four of the nine surviving manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. [6] [nb 2] In the Parker Chronicle, its verse lines are written out as poetry, [6] following common Anglo-Saxon scribal practice. The 73-line long poem is written in "indeterminate Saxon," that is, the regular West-Saxon dialect in which most surviving ...