Language_And_Style_In_Beowulf

Language And Style In Beowulf Language and Style in Beowulf The epic poem Beowulf is an exciting adventure story about a warrior who kills ferocious monsters. The use of description and poetic language allows the story to come alive and for the reader to visualize the characters, and events. Alliteration, kennings, metaphors, and exaggeration are some of the main things that combine to allow this poem to be experienced like a story rather than like most other poetry. Throughout Beowulf alliteration is often used. Alliteration is the repetition of the same first letter or sound in a group of words.(Junior Dictionary 19). Old English poetry has no stanzic form and no rhyme except by accident; it consists of lines that run together to form sentences. There is no set number of syllables per line. In Beowulf a normal line contains between eight and twelve syllables. (Jagular1). This helps give this story a more poetic sound. For example, alliteration can be seen in “Nor might the wise warrior set aside his woe.” (Beowulf1065). This shows the repetition of the letter “W”. Another example of alliteration is, “Fastened with five forged bonds.” (Beowulf1072). This one obviously shows the repeating of the letter “F”. Very often through the story story, beowulf, reader, alliteration, poem, kennings, often, metaphors, warrior, very, things, thing, name, line, letter, interesting, example, exaggerations, exaggeration, even, epic, another, again, visualize, throughout, through, syllables, sound, shows, set, seen, repetition, repeating, referred, rather, poetry