HEL l 5 Anglo-Saxon England II

Works translated into OE by King Alfred the Great

• Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy,

• Psalter

• St. Augustine’s Soliloquies

• Orosius’s Histories against the Pagans

• Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People…

aestel

a pointer for reading with an inscription: Alfred ordered me to be made

Why did King Alfred the Great translate the Pastoral Care

It was a part of his campaign against the declining standard of learning in England

how the particular copy of the Pastoral Care is titled?

This Book is to go to Worcester. It was not under Alfred’s handwriting but it was made under his direction between 890 and 897 AD

What did King Alfred the Great do?

He promoted English literacy by translating major foundational texts from Latin to Old English.

ubi-sunt-formula

Appears in Boethius. A literary motif and rhetorical device where narrator asks the questions about a disappearance of notable figures. Used in the context of vanitas: transience of things and people.

how ubi-sunt-formula was changed by King Alfred the Great

King Alfred changed the name of the character mentioned in Boethius from Fabricius to Weland the Smith. He wanted to use the figure deeply rooted in Norse and therefore English culture for the readers to understand the message of the text.

Formal aspects of OE poetry and language

-verse structure and alliteration

-poetic language

-word order patterns

verse structure and alliteration: half-lines and caesura

on verse (on the left) and off verse (on the right)

verse structure and alliteration: run-on lines

poetry term for when a thought, sentence, or clause continues from one line directly to the next without a pause or punctuation

verse structure and alliteration: apposition

a grammatical construction where two elements, usually noun phrases, are placed side-by-side so that the second phrase identifies, renames, or explains the first (e.g., "My brother Joe" or "Paris, the capital of France”

verse structure and alliteration: variation

verse structure and alliteration

verse structure and alliteration: alliteration

a repetition of the same consonantal sound at the beginning of two or more stressed words in a line.

verse structure and alliteration: alliteration restrictions

the initial consonantal clusters: sc-, sp-, st- may alliterate only with themselves.

in classical poetry the palatal glide (j) represented by (g) and a palatal affricate (tch) represented by c, alliterate with velars (k) and (g) respectively.

poetic language: poetic compounds

the creation or combination of two or more words to form a new, single lexeme specifically for aesthetic, rhythmic, or expressive purposes. e.g. painful-death, shadow-walker

poetic language: synonyms

man=mann, wer, dryhten

woman=wif, wifman, faemne

poetic language: kennings

a figurative two-word phrase used in place of a ordinary single-word noun.

word order patterns: the order pf major clause constituents

subject, direct object, verb

word order in Proto-Indo-European

SOV but the daughter languages show a variety of word order patterns like SVO and VSO (VSO particulary in Celtic)