Alliteration In Beowulf

Beowulf Compared to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight For the past three months, the class has read many great works of literature from the book The Longman Anthology of British Literature. The book contains many intriguing stories, poems, and even lyrics from the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages was a period of various rulers, most of whom were Anglo-Saxon, and many different pieces of literature came from this period. According the book The Longman Anthology of British Literature, the literature in the Middle Ages is divided into two parts called Old English (700-1066) and New English (1600-1500) (8). The Middle Ages occurred in what we know call Great Britain or England. The Middle Ages brought forth many tales of different kinds of heroes. These heroes set forth on many vigorous journeys and that consisted of fighting evil beings with magical powers.
The narrative Beowulf uses alliterations, kennings, repetition, monologues, metonymy and synecdoche. An example of alliteration used in Beowulf is around the lines 700-1100 in the text when Grendel was approaching and fighting the people in the hall. The lines say “Heorot trembled, wonderfully built to withstand the blows, the struggling great bodies beating at its beautiful walls. . .” (Damrosch, David, et. al). There is the repetition of the letter b in these lines would make the listener or the reader be very interested in the story. The use of alliteration in the Middle Ages was commonly used because stories were passed down orally and to keep listeners interested the author would alliterate and pronounce things differently. As stated in our textbook The Longman Anthology of British Literature, kennings are also used in Beowulf. A kenning is a compounded word used for “stylistic effect” and is a kind of “compressed metaphor.” An example of this is “whale-road” meaning ocean or “wave-cutter for ship. (Damrosch, David, et. al.