Reza Iranpur

The use of literary devices in Old English Literature

Old English Literature as one of the Germanic Languages was not a heavily ruled language. This
very fact made the poets have enough freedom to compose literature in a more literary way
than other languages. Also, as we know the old English literature was oral and in oral poetry,
it’s much more necessary to have literary devices in order to make the poem remembered and
circulated easier. The scops were supposed to add as many literary devices as possible to
describe their heroic narrations. These literary devices mostly included Simile, Metaphor,
Kennings, Litotes and alliteration.
In comparison to Metaphors, there are few similes in Old English. Even from those few similes,
there are fewer are appealing and to the point. (Greenblatt,2012) However, every now and
then we come across some fine similes in Old English, such as when the speaker in Beowulf
describes a ship sailing through the ocean. The narrator says ''Over the waves, with the wind
behind her / And foam at her neck, she flew like a bird / Until her curved prow had covered the
distance". In this example, the scop uses the word “like” to visualize the story for the listeners
so that they can also see the story.
Metaphors and Metonymies were used frequently in the Old English literature, but it’s hard to
draw a line between them and kennings, since the latter is a compound in which each element
identifies an attribute through the figures of metaphor, metonymy or synecdoche (“Kennings”,
Culture and Belief 45 Workbook), and the Scops preferred using metaphors in phrases. The
reason why the Old English literature was full of kennings is still a wonder. But we can say one
prominent reason is that in order to keep up with the alliteration, the scops had to use
kennings instead of the actual words, or perchance, lack of the words in Old English and
avoiding the repetition of the words motivated the scops to use their imagination to make up
kennings. Another likely reason might be the preference of the scops to decorate their
narration and mystify their listeners as the riddles which later on were derived from kenning
did. As we read Beowulf, we see that the scop was much into using kennings for the sea and the
ships, maybe because much of the story happens in the seas. Whale-road, sail-road, whale`s
way, and swan road are some of the kennings used as for the word sea.
Litotes, very common in Old English, are figures of speech that use an understand statement of
an affirmative by using a negative description. (“Literary Devices in Old English “, Tandfonline)
in our own 21th century conversations we sometimes emphasize a point by stating a negative
to further affirm a positive, for example instead of saying “she is really smart”, we say “She was
not unintelligent” or instead of saying “I’m old”, we say “I am not as young as I used to be”. In
Beowulf, for example, the scop says “That edge was not useless to the warrior now” meaning
that the edge was really useful for the warrior. (“Litotes”, Literary Devices). All the litotes might
also be called understatement but not every understatement is considered as a litotes. For
example, the following line from Beowulf is an Understatement but it’s not a Litotes “Hildeburh
had little cause to credit the Jutes.” (The following lines in the Beowulf describe the loss of her
son and husband due to the Jutes)
Alliteration for Old English Poetry, was as essential as rhymes for rhyme poems. In old English
poetry, alliteration was a continual and essential part of the metrical scheme (each two half-lines
were connected by alliteration). It was integral to the memorization of the lines as well. One of the most
beautiful examples for alliteration comes from Beowulf, “Ac onwacnigeað nū, wīgend mīne” meaning
“But awake now, my warriors” as we see the translators also tried to keep the beautiful alliterations in
their translated versions of Beowulf. Without rhymes, it was the alliteration which made old English
poetry appealing to the ears.

In an age when form was not less important than the content, as the literature was oral and the
listeners must have been active and attentive during the hearing of the stories to consider a
poem as successful, the scops were mainly trying to make their stories more interesting by
confusing and having the listeners to discover the original meanings (by using Metaphors,
Kennings, Litotes…) and also by making the very sounds more appealing (by using alliteration
and stresses…). With the limited literary devices (comparing to later literature), we see that
they have not been unsuccessful to achieve their goals!

*Beowulf. Trans. Seamus Heaney. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Gen. ed.
Stephen Greenblatt. 9th ed. Vol. A. New York: Norton, 2012. 41-108. Print

*“Kennings”, Culture and Belief 45 Workbook: http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/cb45/ , 2010

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*“Literary Devices in Old English”, Tandfonline” http://Tandfonline.com , 2012 June 22. Web.
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*“Litotes”, Literary Devices : http://www.literarydevices.com , 2007 February21. Web. 2016
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