The Kennings In Beowulf

The English language is full of nondescript, emotionless words that fail to convey any meaningful feelings. To get around this shortcoming many old English writers like the one that wrote Beowulf use kennings to create an emotionally evocative word with the meaning of the emotionless word. In Beowulf the author uses the kenning, “It would keep the bone-cage of his body safe” to provide a more descript and emotionally charged description than the word skeleton would create if used in the sentence (ln. 1446). The term bone-cage is used to show how the body was simply viewed as the carrying case of sorts for the soul, whereas skeleton describes more a sense of death and time which does not fit the Christian message trying to be construed. The