Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Old English Poetic Metre

Old English Poetic Metre

Hutcheson, B. R.

Hardcover

Literary CriticismGeneral Poetry

ISBN10: 0859914356
ISBN13: 9780859914352
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: Dec 30 1995
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.66
Height: 1.27 Width: 6.84 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Metrical study of Old English poetry drawing on database of almost half the surviving corpus - a uniquely extensive sample.

The primary aim of this study is to provide an improved description of Old English metre. Making use of a computerized database containing 13,044 lines of Old English poetry (about 40% of the total which survives), it is unique among other studies of Old English metre (which have usually confined themselves to Beowulf) for the size of the corpus it examines. Although located firmly within the traditional five types' theory of Old English metre, itdeparts from previous critical orthodoxies in several respects. It places greater emphasis than is usual on syntax and formulaic diction, and demonstrates, for example, that a coherent metrical system emerges if alliteration is used as a guide to word stress, and that resolution is a metrically significant phenomenon. A secondary aim is to recover the way Anglo-Saxon poets composed their verse, with important implications for oral-formulaic theory; and a revised terminology is suggested.

B.R. HUTCHESON teaches at Macon College, USA.

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