دانلود کتاب The Larger Rhetorical Patterns in Anglo-Saxon Poetry

Published in 1935, Columbia University Press. Reprinted 1966.

The study of rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon poetry that is presented in this volume is limited to the consideration of verse paragraphs and of digressions and formulas which belong to the design of a poem as a whole.

I began my examination of the style of Anglo-Saxon poetry with the idea of analyzing metrical groupings; that is, of determining, if possible, the combinations in which the Sievers types most often appear in consecutive lines, and what relation, if any, such groupings may have to the content. But, as I read the poems over and over and always aloud, my interest was caught by some rhetorical groupings. It was more and more evident that the metrical unit, the Germanic line or half-line, is not the only structural unit in Anglo-Saxon verse, but that as with most long non-strophic poems, there is a wave-like movement of the lines, a rising and falling of emphasis—in the language of prose, a paragraph movement. I therefore gave up my work on the metrical groupings and directed my attention solely to the rhetorical features of the poems, and chiefly to the identification of certain rhetorical group patterns.

The immediate purpose of this study (which covers only a part of the results of the examination) is to attempt to answer the question: Are there any long rhetorical units in Anglo-Saxon poetry? There is considerable evidence that the poets at times followed definite structural patterns through periods of five to fifty verses or even more. That these patterned verse groups are often effectively rhetorical and that they are undoubtedly rhetorical in intention is the thesis herein set forth.