From Prosody to Formulaic Structure

In lieu of attempting to reshape an existing model in order to represent fully the complex structure of Old English poetic phraseology, let us follow the practice established in earlier chapters and begin by asking what we might reasonably expect to find in the way of formulaic structure. In other words, given the idiosyncratic prosody of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poetry, what kind of diction is possible and likely?

We recall that, while the ancient Greek and Serbo-Croatian metrical

lines—the hexameter and deseterac , respectively—show at least some similarity in their outward make-up and inner morphology, the Old English alliterative line diverges widely from these two comparands. Not only is the Anglo-Saxon line a stress-based rather than a quantitative meter, but it also varies significantly in syllable count, has no caesura and therefore no colonic structure, and exhibits nothing of the Indo-European tendency toward what we have called "right justification." Under such variant conditions there is, we discovered, no reason to expect the colonic formulaic morphology typical of Homer and the guslar . Indeed, this important dissimilarity was what led to our outright rejection of formula-density tests of Old English verse that use the colonic formula as the phraseological model.

Instead of the encapsulated phrase that can vary only in strictly defined ways under the constraints of syllable count, colon configuration, and other features inherited from the symbiosis of Indo-European meter and phraseology, we encounter in Old English poetry a phrase that in its very inscrutability reflects the prosody that supports it. It is perhaps not an accident that no issue in Old English scholarship has been more and longer contested than the definition of the meter, in part because this Germanic line does not fit any familiar, institutionalized Greco-Roman model. And with the understanding of the prosody in a state of uncertainty, the "metrical conditions" of Parry's concept of the formula could not be adequately and fairly set. If investigators adhered too stubbornly to the colonic formula, or searched for too tidily synchronic a model of its morphology, it is at least in part because they had no way to confront the highly idiosyncratic prosodic underpinnings of Old English poetic diction.

In chapter 3 it was demonstrated that most metrical systems proposed for Old English poetry agree in large part that the chief prosodic features of the line are stress emphasis and alliteration. Beyond these regularly occurring characteristics of the meter, we found that the poet used a limited set of stress-patterns; whether we refer to these patterns as Sievers's Five Types or employ the revisions of Pope, Greed, or Cable, the overall picture is approximately the same: four stress maxima (SMs) per line, with a varying number of secondary and minimal stresses. The possibility for variation is greatly enhanced by the further factors of resolution (more than one syllable under a heavy stress) and ramification (multiple minimally stressed syllables), while the restricted set of permitted half-line types counterbalances the tendency toward multiformity. Whatever metrical theory we may select to tabulate line-types and explain their interrelationships, these are the bare metrical facts one must confront in attempting a faithful account of formulaic structure in Old English verse.

A few additional facts can be derived from these first premises, and they will aid us in pursuing the assortment of traditional structures we find in Beowulf . First, from the prior scholarship on prosody and from chapter 3 we can readily

see that the alliterative line is a hybrid prosody—that is, it reveals both half-line (or verse) and whole-line levels of metrical organization.^[3] At the half-line level, as demonstrated earlier, only a limited number of stress patterns are permitted. Furthermore, all of these patterns, however defined, can occur in either the first or the second verse, so that there is an interchangeability among half-line metrical patterns that is restricted only by the prosodic rule that second half-lines (or b-verses) cannot bear double alliteration. Again unlike the Homeric hexameter and Serbo-Croatian deseterac , then, the Anglo-Saxon alliterative line is a balanced, symmetrical unit with essentially interchangeable halves.

At the same time, because alliteration binds the two half-lines together and creates a larger unit at another level, the alliterative line also shows a whole-line metrical structure. Although the individual verses are largely interchangeable, this agreement of initial sounds defines the composite structure as an entity in its own right. And, as we saw in chapter 3, there is evidence that the Beowulf poet superimposed on this whole-line variety a set of three favored line-types or -patterns which further organized the meter and his phraseology. Although the corpus of comparable poetry in Old English (that is, epic poetry that could serve a comparative role under the criterion of genre-dependence) is far too small to permit determination of whether this kind of metrical formula was a general phenomenon^[4] or not, the fact of the increased metrical conservatism constitutes further evidence for whole-line metrical organization.

To summarize, then, we should begin our search for the formulaic structure of Beowulf by realizing that the Old English alliterative line consists not of a colon-based, quantitative meter with some expression of right justification,^[5] but rather of a stress-based meter which figures itself forth in a limited series of multiforms governed by morphological rules. And while we note the importance of the half-line unit in these respects, we should also remember that the ways in which these multiforms combine under the aegis of binding alliteration reveal that the poet also composes in whole lines. The truest explanation of the compositional process, at least from a metrical perspective, is as a two-level or hybrid process. If we choose to reduce it to only the one or the other (probably to concentration on the half-line, as has usually been done), we may simplify the task of description, but we shall at the same time

remove the rich complexity inherent in the process and sabotage any attempt at a faithful account of formulaic structure.

One last feature, uniquely a characteristic of the Old English line, needs to be brought to light before we proceed to an overall description of the kinds of traditional patterns permitted under the alliterative prosody. This feature stems from the balance between verses in any line, and for that matter among all verses. Given such balance, or interchangeability—so different from the "four and six" cola of the deseterac or the complex collection of unequal cola in the Homeric hexameter—it is inherently unlikely that lines will be end-stopped as frequently in Old English as in the other two poetries. That is, the balanced line structure may be construed as actually encouraging enjambement; more often than not, that enjambement may well be of the "unnecessary" variety that carries over into the next line to add to an already syntactically complete utterance,^[6] but there is nothing metrical to discourage the use of "necessary" enjambement as well. Indeed, since one verse is, with the exception of the alliterative constraint and metrical formula, just like any other, a phrase may be completed at mid-line or end-line as the poet wishes.^[7] Or he may "sort" his traditional patterns over more than a single line, since there is little metrical resistance to doing so. We shall soon see in more detail how this feature affects not only enjambement but also traditional patterns larger than a single line, but for the moment it is perhaps enough to observe that the typically Anglo-Saxon poetic figure of variation (the accrual of appositives to a noun or verb to form a paratactic string of poetic synonyms)^[8] can be traced to this metrical feature.