Alfred the Great's most important contribution to Old English prose literature Content

3. Features of poetic language in the Old English period
The poetic vocabulary of the English language of the ancient period differs significantly from the vocabulary of Old English prose.
The first thing to note in this regard is the abundance of synonyms that we find in poetic language (epic ec ki e f op m y ly), especially for those concepts that are of particular importance in the life of Old English society. B chi c l o t a ki x f op m y l v xo dit thaet waes God cyning ! - d o b p y was to o n y ng! [11] Numerous names of the ship also belong to them - flota , b ā t , wunden - stefna ; the names of the sea - hr ā n - r ā d , str ē amas , brim , the names of warriors - beorn , rinc , pe ʒ n , mec ʒ, sec ʒ, wer . For the concept of 'hero' in D.A. the language had 37 poetic synonyms, for the concept of the sea - 17, battle - 12:
Đa þær Byrhtnoð, ongan beornas trymian,
Rad and rædde, rincum tæhte
Hu hi sceoldon standan and þone stede healdan...
... began to put troops according to the charter of Burchtnot,
rode on a horse, pointed out to each warrior,
who has a place for a warrior ...
For example, words such as hete -þ anc "hate the thought", f æ r - ni ð "attack of malice", flet - werod "guards of the house", w ī gh ē ap "war squad" in a passage from Beowulf, in which Hrothgar narrates about the sorrows caused to his people by Grendel, add color to the poem:
Sorh is mē tō secganne on sefan mīnum
Gumena ængum, hwæt mē Grendel hafað
Hynðo on Heorote mid his hete-þancum,
Fær-niða gefremed; is mīn flat-werod,
Wīghēap _ _ _ _ gewanod .
The poetic language of the Old English period is characterized as a synthetic language. This means that Old English had a grammatical structure in which a single word, such as a noun, adjective, or verb, takes on various formal elements (affixes) of the relations of this word with other words in a sentence. Thus, the agreement of the definition with the defined is expressed by the forms of gender, number and case:
... hū fela _ lande (Gen. n., pl.) h ē w æ re hl a ford
"... how many lands he was master"
In Im.p. landa - land
Due to the fact that the relationship between the members of the sentence can be expressed by the very form of the word, there is no strict need for a fixed word order in the sentence.
“The reverse order was caused mainly by putting adverbs of time þ a , n ū, þ onne in first place , adverbs of place þæ r , h ē r , and also the negative particle ne .”
Nū synt 3eþreade þe3nas mine,
3 eon 3 e 3ūð rincas
“Now my servants are terrified,
Young Warriors»
Sometimes the reverse word order is explained by purely stylistic reasons: such an arrangement of the main members is used when a new narrative line (new subject) is introduced into the sentence:
hi hæfdon þa hēora stemn 3esetenne
Ond hiora mete 3enotundne;
Ond wæs sē syn3 Þa þiderweardes of fære...
"They put their ships
And ate the supplies;
And that ship is gone."
Mostly in poetic works there is an undistributed two-part sentence. Having considered some quatrains of several poems, one can come across 2 or even 3 two-part sentences. Sometimes they meet in a row:
Wedercandel swearc , windas wēoxan , _ _
W æ3 es 3 rundon , str ēā mas styredon
"The sun darkened, the winds blew hard,
The sea became agitated, the current intensified.
In Old English it is possible to put two or more negatives in a sentence, using particles ne , n ō th , pronouns n ā n , n ā th ( n ō th ):
Þās ilce næfre ne swīcen ne dei ne niht
t ō brecanne þ a erming licome
"they never stop night or day
smash unfortunate bodies"
The organizing principle of versification in Old English is alliteration, which is characteristic of all Old Germanic poetry. The peculiarity of the alliterative verse is the presence of four stresses in the verse (two in each half-line) and the repetition of the same sounds at the beginning of a series of words that make up the verse (line); in this case, the stress falls on syllables that begin with the same sounds (consonance coincides with stress).¹⁰
The repetition of the pre-stressed consonant at the beginning of the first and second half-line was considered obligatory for the ancient Greek alliterative verse:
Fōlk-þrinces fared then frōm far and from nēar,
Thrōugh long-stretching journeys to look at the wonder.
Such repetitions play an organizing role in the verse, being one of the types of initial rhyme. The ending rhyming verse came to replace the alliterative verse much later.
Old English poetry is characterized by a peculiar poetic speech and rhythmic structure of the poem. Here, the method of parallelism, characteristic of epic monuments, is widely used. Multiple repetitions of the same motive accentuate certain episodes of the plot and deepen their inner meaning. So, in the poem "Beowulf" four times it is said about the campaign of Higelak. The theme of tribal vengeance is heard repeatedly, the repetition of this theme emphasizes the idea that revenge for a dead relative is the duty of a warrior.
The technique of repetition is also used in the selection of epithets that are widely used in poetry: a warrior is always brave, brave, furious in battle, horses are brown:
Hwīlum heaþo-rōfe hleapan lēton,
On 3eflit faran fealwe mearas...
“At times, the brave men let the buckskin horses run and race”
The language of poetry is striking in the richness of metaphorical names that are used to more vividly convey various episodes. The sea is called the “whale-road”, the “playground of winds”; the sword is designated as "light of battle" (light of battle); the woman is called “the spinner of the world” (peace-weaver), “the decoration of the dwelling” (dwelling-ornament), the sword is called “friend Hrunting”:
Íc mēmid Hruntin3e dōm 3ewyrce,
Oðpe mē deað nimeð
" I I will conquer with the sword glory for yourself,
or death will take me"
Retreats play an important role. They perform various functions: they introduce the background of the characters, predict their future, complement the plot, clarifying individual episodes:
Wedercandel swearc, windas wēoxan,
Wæ3es 3rundon, strēāmas styredon,
Stren3as 3urron3 Wædo 3ewætte
« sun darkened , the winds strongly blew out ,
The sea became agitated, the current intensified,
The ropes moved, the ropes got wet.
All the considered new features of the poetic language of the 5th-11th centuries distinguish the language of this period from the language of the subsequent period. At the same time, they constitute a certain system of regularities, in other words, the poetic language of the named period has its own distinct typological features, and these are:
• a well-preserved vocabulary from ancient times, homogeneous in origin, with only a small number of words borrowed from Latin and Celtic;
the presence of a category of grammatical gender;
• relatively free order of the members of the sentence and the propagation of inversion;
• the possibility of using two or more negatives;
• the use of epithets, metaphors, alliterative verse.
All this gives full grounds to distinguish the poetic language of the 5th-11th centuries in the course of the history of the English language into the language of a special period, which, based on the historical events described above (the development of social forms), could be called the poetic language of the emerging English people, and from the point of view of periodization of the history of the English language - the poetic language of the Old English period.