Dec 26, 2009

Beowulf | Style

“Beowulf” consists of seven six-line stanzas. Each stanza describes one part of the narrative, following chronological order. The tone is formal, in keeping with the account of a hero. However, Wilbur is not writing a story so much as a character study of Beowulf, or of all heroes. The most dramatic event—the battle with the monster—takes only two lines of the poem. The stanzas reveal the atmosphere of the hero’s experience, but they do not provide much detail about the actual adventures.

The rhyme scheme is the same for each stanza. Using the letters a, b, and c to...