Alliteration In Beowulf

Alliteration, Imagery, and Kenning in Beowulf In the Anglo-Saxon poem “Beowulf”, the author’s used multiple different literary devices, three in particularly stuck out throughout the entire story, being alliteration, kenning, and imagery; the literary devices were used to connect the story, and help the reader understand the life of Beowulf, and emphasize the parts that were not clear throughout the story. The author uses literary devices throughout the story of “Beowulf” to emphasize on Beowulf’s heroism, and to connect Beowulf to the epic poem. The use of alliteration is used to create a voice that only the readers will understand from reading throughout the story, an example following the idea of alliteration would be “Whichever one death fells must deem it a just judgement by God” (lines 400-441). Alliteration is to be described as a repetition of similar consonant sounds. Another example of alliteration in “Beowulf” would be on lines 446-447, “He will carry me away as he goes to ground, gorged and bloodied” (446-447). Alliteration is used in the following quote to emphasize on the floor and the way the narrator was treated.

An example of imagery in the poem of “Beowulf”, would be “God’s bright beacon/appeared in the east, the water lay still,/And at last I could see the land, wind-wept/ Cliff-walls to the coast. Fate saves/The living when they drive away death by themselves!”(41, 569-574). In the quote from the poem above, the author used imagery to create the image of god’s light shining through the clouds, the still water and the wind being wept. The affect imagery has in this part of the poem is to set the mood of the poem before a major event happens in the