The metrical grammar of 'Beowulf' (review)

Abstract

Reviews 147 are included on the background to the period: a general overview by Holton himself, a more specifically historical introduction by Chryssa Maltezou, another on the literary antecedents by Arnold van Gemert, and an overall conclusion by Margaret Alexiou dealing with the relationship between literature and contemporary popular tradition. There are also studies on specific literary genres: the pastoral mode and dramatic interludes by Rosemary Bancroft-Morris, comedy by Alfred Vincent, tragedy by Walter Puchner, religious drama by W i m Bakker, and romance by Holton again. As may be seen from the full bibliographies, all the contributors to this volume are at the cutting edge of the work that has been done in recent years in placing the cultural manifestations of Venetian Crete within a framework of the abundant Venetian archive material. Surprises continue to emerge. The volume is a very useful specialist handbook. However, its primary significance is as a vital watershed in the opening up of an important subject for those whose interest is tangential, perhaps linguistically limited. It will remain for the forseeable future an essential starting-point for all explorations of this field. Elizabeth and Michael Jeffreys Department of M o d e m Greek University of Sydney Kendall, Calvin B., The metrical grammar of 'Beowulf (Cambridge studies in Anglo-Saxon England, 5), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xvi, 318; R.R.P. AUS$135.00. Professor Kendall's concerns with Old English metre arose originally out of the oral-formulaic discussions which dominated Old English scholarship, especially in the United States, during the 1960s and 70s. However, in this study they proceed to larger questions of convention and composition. Kendall begins with a detailed study of Hans Kuhn's two laws on Old English poetry, formulated in 1933. Thefirst,'the law of Germanic sentence particles' has been much discussed by earlier scholars; the second, 'the law of Germanic clause openings', less so. Kendall suggests that Kuhn's laws refer to the 'metrical grammar' rather than merely 'the metre' of Beowulf. He concludes that: 'Kuhn's laws are a function of the verse clause . . . the laws apply, positively or negatively,tothefirstdip and thefirststressed element of the verse clause' (p. 28). By verse clause he means the clause which is constituted in halflines or verses. Kendall thus shows how Kuhn's laws relate the phonological unit of metre, the verse, to the grammatical unit of syntax, the clause. The metrical types, as in Siever's A to E, are not interchangeable, as has usually been claimed, but must be considered in relation to different grammatical types of half-lines. Kendall then discusses in analytic detail the interactive constraints 148 Reviews of grammar and metre within which the poet appears to write. That is to say, he describes the 'metrical grammar' of the poem. The discussion is set out in sixteen short but intense chapters, followed by a glossary of technical terms and a bibliography. The remainder of the book includes a complete index of Kendall's analysis of all the lines of Beowulf and an index of all verses specially discussed in thefirstpart of the book. Scholars who have made use of A. J. Bliss's similarly exhaustive account in his The metre of Beowulf (rev. ed., Oxford, 1967) will find the former particularly interesting. Kendall imagines the Beowulf-poet as probably literate, possibly educated in Latin, but none the less one who learned his craft within the inherited tradition of oral composition. In the preface he states that: 'the interesting question is what the assumption that the Beowulf-poet was steeped in a cultural tradition of oral poetry could tell us about the way the poem works' (p. x). Though much of the book stays closely at the level of linguistic analysis, Kendall at times makes generalizations which relate to this 'interesting question'. For example, having discusssed unique features of the verse la gewidru (Beowulf 1375a), he comments that: 'I find the half-line particularly interesting because it may represent a moment when the Beowulf-poet deliberately thwarted the imperatives of his metrical grammar for expressive effect. Such acts must be rare for poets who have learned their craft in an oral...