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A kenning (Old English kenning [cʰɛnːiŋɡ], Modern Icelandic [cʰɛnːiŋk] ... One reference for this kenning comes from the epic poem, Beowulf.
A kenning (Icelandic: [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a figure of speech, a figuratively-phrased compound term that is used in place of a simple single-word noun. For instance, the Old English kenning ' whale's road ' (hron rade) means ' sea ', as does swanrād (' swan's road '). A kenning has two parts: a base-word (also known as a head-word) and a ...
The Beowulf dragon is the earliest example in literature of the typical European dragon and first incidence of a fire-breathing dragon. [10] The Beowulf dragon is described with Old English terms such as draca (dragon), and wyrm (reptile, or serpent), and as a creature with a venomous bite. [11]
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.
Kennings are a key feature of Old English poetry. A kenning is an often formulaic metaphorical phrase that describes one thing in terms of another: for instance, in Beowulf, the sea is called the whale road. Another example of a kenning in The Wanderer is a reference to battle as a "storm of spears". [22]
The difficulty of translating Beowulf from its compact, metrical, alliterative form in a single surviving but damaged Old English manuscript into any modern language is considerable, [1] matched by the large number of attempts to make the poem approachable, [2] and the scholarly attention given to the problem.
Alliterative poets drew on a specialized vocabulary of poetic synonyms rarely used in prose texts [49] [15] and used standard images and metaphors called kennings. [ 50 ] [ 51 ] [ 52 ] Old Saxon and medieval English attest to the word fitt with the sense of 'a section in a longer poem', and this term is sometimes used today by scholars to refer ...
Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] [2 ... proposed that the name Bēowulf literally means in Old English "bee-wolf" or "bee-hunter" and that it is a kenning for ...