Epic of Beowulf Essay - Beowulf and Its Formulas -- Epic Beowulf essay

Beowulf   and Its Formulas    The making of Beowulf involved the choosing of formulas mostly, from a common body of narrative, rather than individual words, and largely on the basis of alliterative needs.    In his esay, â€Å"The Pessimism of Many Germanic Stories,† A. Kent Hieatt says:    The Germanic peoples seem to have inherited a common body of narrative, which is a key to understanding the often incomplete and puzzling allusions and interpolated stories forming a large part of Beowulf† (45).    In his essay â€Å"The Point of View and Design for Terror,† Alan Renoir states: â€Å"The theory that Old English poetry was formulaic and composed orally at the time of recitation is all but generally accepted today† (154). About 20% of the half-lines are repeated at least elsewhere in the poem. An essential part of 50% of the half-lines are likewise repeated. A large percentage of these essential parts, or formulas, have a resemblance to others in the poem, suggesting that the poet was guided by the sense of the poem, and perhaps by other factors like its sound or rhythm. â€Å"The diction of Beowulf is schematized to an extraordinary degree† (Creed 141).    The concept of â€Å"formula† needs defining perhaps. A formula can be a half-line, a whole line, a line-and-a-half sometimes, or as small as a single-syllable word as long as it is a significant part of the scop’s rhythm. If not a phrase or a clause, a formula should be an article and its noun, a noun/pronoun and its verb, a verb and its object, a preposition and its noun, etc. For example the verb-adverb pair hwearf pa is proven to be a formula because it is repeated at the beginning of lines 1188 (hwearf pa bi bence), 1210 (gehwearf pa in Francna faepm), and 1573 (hw... ...er to Egbert. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969.    Creed, Robert P.. â€Å"The Making of an Anglo-Saxon Poem.† In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.    Hieatt, A. Kent. â€Å"The Pessimism of Many Germanic Stories.† In Readings on Beowulf, edited by Stephen P. Thompson. San Diego: Greenhaven Press,1998.    Magoun, Frances P. â€Å"Oral-Formulaic Character of Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry.†Ã‚   In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.    Renoir, Alan. â€Å"The Point of View and Design for Terror.† In TheBeowulf Poet, edited by Donald K. Fry. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968.    Ward & Trent, et al. The Cambridge History of English and American Literature. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907–21; New York: Bartleby.com, 2000