Beowulf and The Canterbury Tales Vocabulary

The repetition of the same initial sounds in a sequence of words or syllables.

Alliteration

A direct address by a speaker to someone or something that cannot answer such as an abstraction, an inanimate object, or a dead or absent person.

Apostrophe

Recurring patterns of character, situation, or symbol, found in the mythologies, art, and stories of multiple cultures.

Archetype

An Anglo-Saxon warrior's detail of his accomplishments or intentions in inflated, often poetic language, allowing his reputation to live on after death.

Boast

A break or pause in the middle of a line of poetry; often used to create rhythm in Anglo-Saxon poetry

Caesura

A poem that contemplates death and mortality.

Elegy

A long narrative poem that consists of heroic deeds and emphasizes honorable conduct within a specific culture. Other characteristics of this genre include: formal language, long speeches, supernatural characters, and a vast setting.

Epic

A brave and noble character who is legendary for his fantastic feats of bravery and/or strength in defeating manifestations of evil in order to save his culture.

Epic hero

A descriptive term used with or in place of a name that becomes a common reference to the person, place, or object.

Epithet

A brief story used to make a point in an argument or to illustrate a moral truth.

Exemplum

A type of compound word that describes an object in an indirect or imaginative way. They are often found in Germanic poems.

Kenning

A turn of phrase in which deliberate understatement is created through negation.

Litotes

A figure of speech in which something is represented by another thing closely associated with it (like "crown" for "king").

Metonymy

Also known as the "hero's journey", a universal plot structure that myths from disparate cultures share.

Monomyth

The verbal origins of literature; a society's tradition and history passed down through the generations by storytelling.

Oral tradition

A two-word phrase that seems contradictory but actually is not, like "jumbo shrimp."

Oxymoron

Story-tellers in preliterate societies who recited stories, poetry, and songs to celebrate the groups history and morality.

Scop

A figure of speech in which a whole is represented by naming one of its parts (like "head of cattle" to represent the whole cow).

Synecdoche

The widely used native or domestic language of the people of a specific country or geographical area, which is often different from the official language of government or religion.

Vernacular

The Anglo-Saxon concept of fate or destiny or "of what was meant to be."

Wyrd