(no subject)

[vyvyanx]

After reading The Silmarillion at last this year (borrowed from robinbloke; thank you again), I felt inspired to read LOTR yet again. On reaching the song Bilbo makes in Rivendell just before the Council of Elrond, I was struck for the first time not merely by how much more sense it makes once you know who Eärendil is, but also by the unusual complexity of the poetic structure. Before I thought it was just structured around iambic tetrameter, with rather loose end-rhyme between even-numbered lines, and no clear verse plan. But now I notice it also has a reasonably strict assonance and some consonance of the last 4 syllables of odd-numbered lines with the first 4 syllables of following even-numbered lines. (The vowels of unstressed syllables all seem to count as equivalent.) For example:

In panoply of an-cient kings
in chain-ed rings he armoured him;

o'er leagues unlit and found-ered shores
that drowned be-fore the Days began,

But on him might-y doom was laid,
till Moon should fade, an orbed star
etc.

(There's also a fair amount of Old English-style alliteration e.g. he built a boat; his shining shield; and banner bright; the Flammifer...)

Comments

[sparrowsion]

Old English-style alliteration

Quite how much there is of that really leaped out at me when I reread the other year for the first time since learning OE. It's kind of odd how it's practically invisible unless you've met that style though.

[alcina2.livejournal.com]

You're familiar with OE? Mind if I ask you a question? I've often been struck by how similar the 'Lay of the Children of Hurin' is to translations of Beowulf that I've read, as well as translations of some other OE poetry.

Is this a)true(I'm no student of literature, unfortunately) and 2) does the OE original ahve the same sort of structure ( I'm so unsure how to pronounce OE that I have no idea at all how to scan it)

[vyvyan.livejournal.com]

I've only read the prose version of the story in the Silmarillion, but I gather from the web that he wrote an unfinished version in alliterative verse? Beowulf and most other OE poetry is certainly in alliterative verse of a distinctive kind. Its metre is not based on syllable counting, like Latin and French-influenced verse (mostly from the Middle English period onwards), but on stress counting, with particular stressed syllables reinforced by alliteration (usually the two stressed syllables in the first half line and the first stressed syllable in the second half line). All vowels alliterate with each other; st- only alliterates with st-, and sc- (pronounced sh) only with itself.

For example (leaving out length marks and transliterating thorns and eths with th; half-line boundaries may not come out properly):

Oft Scyld Scefing sceathena threatum,
monegum maegthum meodosetla ofteah...

The stressed syllables in the first line are Scyld, Scef, sceath- and threat-; in the second line: mon-, maegth-, meod-, -teah. (There's a lot more that can be said about the structure of OE verse, but this should probably be enough for you to decide whether Tolkien is trying to use this form in the Lay of the Children of Hurin.) Just ask if you want to know anything else about OE.

[sparrowsion]

The Narn i Hin Hurin in Unfinished Tales is prose too, and those are the only versions I have. It doesn't strike me as being especially closer to OE poetry than anything else.

[alcina2.livejournal.com]

No, I was thinking of the Lay (in HoME III) which is verse.