Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Truisms
- For my mother and my father, Kathleen Reed and Richard Tyler
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Translation
- List of Collocations
- Introduction
- 1 Treasure and Old English Verse
- 2 The Collocation of Words for Treasure in Old English Verse Maðm 40; Hord 52; Gestreon 73; Sinc 77; Frætwe 89
- 3 Formulas and the Aesthetics of the Familiar
- 4 Verbal Repetition and the Aesthetics of the Familiar
- 5 Poetics and the Past: Traditional Style at the Turn of the Millennium
- Bibliography
- Indexes
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
4 - Verbal Repetition and the Aesthetics of the Familiar
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- The Truisms
- For my mother and my father, Kathleen Reed and Richard Tyler
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- A Note on Translation
- List of Collocations
- Introduction
- 1 Treasure and Old English Verse
- 2 The Collocation of Words for Treasure in Old English Verse Maðm 40; Hord 52; Gestreon 73; Sinc 77; Frætwe 89
- 3 Formulas and the Aesthetics of the Familiar
- 4 Verbal Repetition and the Aesthetics of the Familiar
- 5 Poetics and the Past: Traditional Style at the Turn of the Millennium
- Bibliography
- Indexes
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
The notion of the formula focuses attention on shared language which repeats across the corpus of Old English verse. As half-line units, formulas have a strong metrical component. The aspect of Old English poetic style which is referred to as verbal repetition, in contrast, focuses attention on the repetition of words within individual poems – both within discrete passages and across entire poems. Such repetitions of words and phrases do not necessarily entail the repetition of a rhythmic pattern. Verbal repetition and formulas do, however, overlap. On the simplest level, this overlap can be as a result of a word, which recurs in a poem, appearing, on occasion, within a formula, and thus tying a formula into a larger scheme of verbal repetition throughout a poem. On a more conceptual level, there is the strict oralformulaic view that a half-line which is repeated for stylistic, rather than utilitarian, reasons is not a formula but a verbal repetition. Formulas which repeat verbatim within a poem will be of interest in this chapter, as they were in the previous chapter. On an aesthetic level too, formulas and verbal repetition are closely related features of Old English verse; they are both rooted in an aesthetics which takes pleasure in the familiar and which creates familiarity by repetition.
Verbal repetition is a prominent feature of the style of Old English poetry, with virtually all Old English poems being marked by what are, to modern sensibilities, frequent and dense repetitions of lexis.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Old English PoeticsThe Aesthetics of the Familiar in Anglo-Saxon England, pp. 123 - 156Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2006