The Functions of Anglo-Saxon Poetry: An Old English Text Typology

Abstract

ABSTRACTLinguistic functionalism provides a method to distinguish five basic functions that Anglo-Saxon poetic texts performed. One was the aesthetic function which enabled the scop to display traditional themes and motifs as a “word-hoard” of poetic treasures; another was a metalinguistic game which probed readers’ interpretive skills; a third offered gnomic advice; the fourth sought a pragmatic effect on either the reader’s mind or the course of nature, and the fifth opened the imagination to allegorical vision. One of those macrofunctions tends to prevail in each text, determining its main genre, but interacting with others and with various subfunctions; this involves a polyphony of meanings that engages the audience in ways derived from the oral context. By discussing cases from the corpus of Old English poetry, this article outlines a pragmatic frame of analysis for the main uses of language in the texts, additionally informed by post-structuralist contextualism and cognitive approaches.