The Metrical Grammar of Beowulf
This book argues that the formal art of the Old English epic Beowulf is shaped and determined by the poetic language that the poet inherited from the traditional, oral culture of Anglo-Saxon England. The patterns of meter and alliteration exhibited in the poem were not imposed by the poet on his language, but were part of the language that he spoke, the rules of which constituted his metrical grammar. Professor Kendall investigates the constraints of syntax, meter and alliteration that govern...
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This book argues that the Old English epic Beowulf is shaped by the poetic language which the poet inherited.
Preface; List of abbreviations; List of changes from Klaeber's text;1. The Beowulf-poet and his metrical grammar; 2. The alliterative and metrical principles of Beowulf: Kuhn's 'laws' and the transformational rule; 3. The three kinds of half-lines: extra-metrical alliteration and type A3; 4. Displacement; 5. Stressed proclitic adjectives: X-positions and the insertion rule; 6. Problems with the identification of clause-non-initial half-lines: the proclitic onset; 7. Half-lines with internal clause divisions: the transformational rule (revised); 8. The alliterative requirement of unstressed prefixes and the copulative conjunctions; 9. The alliterative requirement of prepositions and the proclitic adverbs and instrumentals; 10. The alliterative requirement of proclitic adjectives and pronouns: the alliterative rule of proclitics; 11. Displaced and detached proclitics; 12. The three classes of compounds: the alliterative requirement of class I compounds; 13. The alliterative behaviour of class II compounds; 14. The alliterative behaviour of class III compounds and simplexes; 15. Metrical typology and the metrical grammar; 16. Conclusions; Appendix; Glossary of technical terms; Bibliography; Index of alliteration, scansion and metrical clause structure; Index of verses specially discussed.
