Codex Exoniensis - The Exeter Book. A Collection of Anglo-Saxon Poetry

Anonymoustranslated Bybenjamin Thorpe

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The Exeter Book (Codex Exoniensis). This book was presented to his Cathedral by Leofric, the first Bishop of Exeter, about the middle of the 11th century. It is preserved in the Cathedral Library at Exeter; the first leaves are missing, and the last leaves are injured; the handwriting of the MS belongs probably to the first half of the 11th century.

In the catalogue of Leofric’s donations to his cathedral, this volume is entered as 'one great English book on various subjects, composed in verse'.

The Exeter Book is the largest extant manuscript of Old English literature and containing approximately one sixth of the Old English poetry that survives.

The most striking characteristics of Anglo-Saxon Poetry are: inversion of phrase; redundance of metaphor; “parallelism,” or repetition in synonymous terms of the same act or idea. Both rhyme and alliteration are found in Anglo-Saxon Poetry, but rhyme is less generally introduced. The structure of the verse is trochaic; the line is divided into two halves by the Caesura, each half line having two stressed syllables, the, unstressed syllables varying in number; the half lines are associated by alliteration, one stressed syllable at least in each half line beginning with a similar consonant, or vowel. Usually the alliteration falls on the two stressed syllables in the first half line and the first stressed syllable in the second. (Summary by Marian Edwardes and Preface) (8 hr 7 min)

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