Old English poetry in the context of "Widsith"

Beowulf (/ˈbeɪəwʊlf/ ; Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) is an Old English poem, an epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines, contained in the Nowell Codex. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. The date of composition is a matter of contention among scholars; the only certain dating is for the manuscript, which was produced between AD 975 and 1025. Scholars call the anonymous author the "Beowulf poet". The story is set in pagan Scandinavia in the 5th and 6th centuries. Beowulf, a hero of the Geats, comes to the aid of Hrothgar, the king of the Danes, whose mead hall Heorot has been under attack by the monster Grendel for twelve years. After Beowulf slays him, Grendel's mother takes revenge and is in turn defeated. Victorious, Beowulf goes home to Geatland and becomes king of the Geats. Fifty years later, Beowulf defeats a dragon, but is mortally wounded in the battle. After his death, his attendants cremate his body and erect a barrow on a headland in his memory.

Scholars have debated whether Beowulf was transmitted orally, affecting its interpretation: if it was composed early, in pagan times, then the paganism is central and the Christian elements were added later, whereas if it was composed later, in writing, by a Christian, then the pagan elements could be decorative archaising; some scholars also hold an intermediate position. Beowulf is written mostly in the Late West Saxon dialect of Old English, but many other dialectal forms are present, suggesting that the poem may have had a long and complex transmission throughout the dialect areas of England.

In prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal device to indicate the underlying metrical structure, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of the Germanic languages, where scholars use the term 'alliterative poetry' rather broadly to indicate a tradition which not only shares alliteration as its primary ornament but also certain metrical characteristics. The Old English epic Beowulf, as well as most other Old English poetry, the Old High German Muspilli, the Old Saxon Heliand, the Old Norse Poetic Edda, and many Middle English poems such as Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Layamon's Brut and the Alliterative Morte Arthur all use alliterative verse.

While alliteration is common in many poetic traditions, it is 'relatively infrequent' as a structured characteristic of poetic form. However, structural alliteration appears in a variety of poetic traditions, including Old Irish, Welsh, Somali and Mongol poetry. The extensive use of alliteration in the so-called Kalevala meter, or runic song, of the Finnic languages provides a close comparison, and may derive directly from Germanic-language alliterative verse.

A menologium (/mɛnəˈloʊdʒiəm/, pl. menologia), also known by other names, is any collection of information arranged according to the days of a month, usually a set of such collections for all the months of the year. In particular, it is used for ancient Roman farmers' almanacs (menologia rustica); for the untitled Old English poem on the Julian calendar that appears in a manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; for the liturgical books (also known as the menaia) used by the Eastern Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches following the Byzantine Rite that list the propers for fixed dates, typically in twelve volumes covering a month each and largely concerned with saints; for hagiographies (also known as synaxaria) and liturgical calendars written as part of this tradition; and for equivalents of these works among Roman Catholic religious orders for organized but private commemoration of their notable members.

A hemistich (/ˈhɛmɪstɪk/; via Latin from Greek ἡμιστίχιον, from ἡμι- "half" and στίχος "verse") is a half-line of verse, followed and preceded by a caesura, that makes up a single overall prosodic or verse unit. In Latin and Greek poetry, the hemistich is generally confined to drama. In Greek tragedy, characters exchanging clipped dialogue to suggest rapidity and drama would speak in hemistichs (in hemistichomythia). The Roman poet Virgil employed hemistichs in the Aeneid to indicate great duress in his characters, where they were incapable of forming complete lines due to emotional or physical pain.

In neo-classicism, the hemistich was frowned upon (e.g. by John Dryden), but Germanic alliterative verse employed the hemistich as a basic component of verse. In Old English and Old Norse poetry, each line of alliterative verse was divided into an "a-verse" and "b-verse" hemistich with a strong caesura between. In Beowulf, there are only five basic types of hemistich, with some used only as initial hemistichs and some only as secondary hemistichs. Furthermore, Middle English poetry also employed the hemistich as a coherent unit of verse, with both the Pearl Poet and Layamon using a regularized set of principles for which metrical (as well as alliterative) forms were allowed in which hemistich position.

In rhetoric, litotes (/laɪˈtoʊtiːz, ˈlaɪtətiːz/, US: /ˈlɪtətiːz/), also known classically as antenantiosis or moderatour, is a figure of speech and form of irony in which understatement is used to emphasize a point by stating a negative to further affirm a positive, often incorporating double negatives for effect. A form of understatement, litotes can be in the form of meiosis, and is always deliberate with the intention of emphasis. However, the interpretation of negation may depend on context, including cultural context. In speech, litotes may also depend on intonation and emphasis; for example, the phrase "not bad" can be intonated differently so as to mean either "mediocre" or "excellent". Along the same lines, litotes can be used (as a form of auxesis), to euphemistically provide emphasis by diminishing the harshness of an observation; "He isn't the cleanest person I know" could be used to indicate that someone is a messy person.

The use of litotes is common in English, Russian, German, Yiddish, Dutch, Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Ukrainian, Polish, Chinese, French, Czech and Slovak, and is prevalent in some other languages and dialects. It is a feature of Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas and is a means of much stoical restraint.