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Verses quite like cwen to gebeddan in The Metres of Boethius

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 April 2006

M. S. Griffith
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Extract

The metrical grammar of Beo 665a cwen to gebeddan is, for that poem, strikingly irregular: the verse is of Sievers Type A with a preposition and prefix in the first dip and yet displays single - rather than the expected double - alliteration. The Metres of Boethius, a text whose metrical grammar (unlike that of Beowulf) generates a number of similar examples of this licence, allows a better understanding of the structure and rhetoric of the Beowulf verse. In particular, these analogous exceptions show that the absence of the expected alliteration accentuates the semantic contrast of the two stressed elements of the verse.

Type
Research Article
Information
Anglo-Saxon England , Volume 34 , December 2005 , pp. 145 - 167
Copyright
© 2005 Cambridge University Press

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