Oral Tradition, 6/1 (1991): 79-92 Compound Diction and Traditional Style in Beowulf and Genesis A

One of the most striking features of Anglo-Saxon alliterative poetry is the extraordinary richness of the vocabulary. Many words appear only in poetry; almost every poem contains words, usually nominal or adjectival compounds, which occur nowhere else in the extant literature. Creativity in coining new compounds reaches its apex in the 3182-line heroic epic Beowulf. In his infl uential work The Art of Beowulf, Arthur G. Brodeur sets out the most widely accepted view of the diction of that poem (1959:28): First, the proportion of such compounds in Beowulf is very much higher than that in any other extant poem; and, secondly, the number and the richness of the compounds found in Beowulf and nowhere else is astonishingly large. It seems reasonable, therefore, to regard the many unique compounds in Beowulf, fi nely formed and aptly used, as formed on traditional patterns but not themselves part of a traditional vocabulary. And to say that they are formed on traditional patterns means only that the character of the language spoken by the poet and his hearers, and the traditional tendency towards poetic idealization, determined their character and form. Their elevation, and their harmony with the poet’s thought and feeling, refl ect that tendency, directed and controlled by the genius of a great poet. It goes without saying that the poet of Beowulf was no “unwashed illiterate, ” but a highly trained literary artist who could transcend the traditional medium. There is another side to the coin. Brodeur is himself reacting to an earlier scholarly consensus, that the style and diction of this magnifi cent poem are to a great extent traditional, rooted in the ancient Germanic past.1 Old English poetry shares its formal features and many of its subjects and themes with other poetic traditions, such as Old High German, Old Saxon, and Old Norse, all of which independently derive from a putative commo