Old English vocabulary – poetry

Why did OE need to expand its poetic vocabulary?

Many reasons, but two big ones

• recurring themes
• old heroic: struggle of human life and its transience
• new Christian
• demands of alliteration

Caedmon’s hymn a good intersection of the challenges

• the first Christian OE poem, by tradition
• has lots of words for God

Variation: repetition of the same concept within a clause or sentence or adjacent sentences

• emphasis
• definition

Words for God as

• guardian: weard
• creator: metodes, faeder, scyppend
• leader: dryhten, frea

Germanic vernacular verse

• stress: each “line” of verse contains 4 stressed syllables
• alternating with 1 or 2 unstressed syllables
• usually trochaic or dactylic
• remember Gmc word-stress
• its half-lines are connected by alliteration
• it’s the third stress that links/identifies key sound
• you wait for it

Literary functions of alliteration

• meahte “physical power” and modgeðanc “mental conception”
• firum “men” and frea “God”

How did poets expand vocabulary?

• compounding: e.g. wuldor-faeder cf. Latin patris gloriae, heofon-rices
• metaphor: e.g. God as “father” or “ruler”, heaven as “kingdom”
• archaisms found only in poetry, e.g. frea “lord”, firum “men”

o many “poetic” words denote men, the sea...