The dictionary of old English: A turning point

Cameron, Angus; Amos, Ashley Crandell

doi:10.1080/00138387808597900

Cited by 35 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…The description wonsaeli wer nods to his ultimate connection with his ancestor Cain, but his humanity is weakened: the phrase appears sporadically in Old English poetry in reference to particularly evil men, notably in the wisdom poem Maxims I, where we are told that 'won-saelig mon genimeð him wulfas to geferen' (Bjork, 2014: 76, 'a cursed man takes wolves as companions'). The word wer itself is furthermore highly generic, being found across both poetry and prose, and contrasts some of the more specialised poetic vocabulary used of Grendel later in the poem (a whole-word search for wer in the Dictionary of Old English Corpus yields 1459 hits) (Cameron et al, 2018). As Mearns (2015: 215, 222) has argued, what constituted 'the supernatural' in the early medieval English imagination was closely aligned with notions a broader notion of the other associated with alienness and the natural world, so wonsaeli wer is entirely congruent with Grendel's monstrosity.…”

Section: Grendel's Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The poetics of attention in Old English verse: A cognitive stylistic approach to the depiction of Grendel inBeowulf

Gunn

2023

Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics

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In this article, I apply Stockwell’s framework of attentional phenomena in language to Old English literature. I outline the special attentional features that we find in Old English poetry, encompassing alliteration, poetic vocabulary and apposition. I then move on to provide an analysis of the figure of Grendel through an attentional lens, arguing that the Beowulf-poet consistently pulls our attention towards his demonic or monstrous aspects rather than his residual humanity. In my discussion, I argue that alliterative patterning and its intersection with lexical content is central to how the poet filters our perception of Grendel. I then move on to examine how the poet uses stock poetic lexis to define him, drawing on the Cognitive Grammar concept of reference points, suggesting that the various synonyms for ‘man’ or ‘warrior’ applied to Grendel are consistently decentred from his overall description. Finally, drawing on Nuttall, I conclude with some observations on how the narrator controls our perception of Grendel’s mind.

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Section: Grendel's Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%