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A caesura (/ s ɪ ˈ zj ʊər ə /, pl. caesuras or caesurae ; Latin for " cutting "), also written cæsura and cesura , is a metrical pause or break in a verse where one phrase ends and another phrase begins.
The difficulty of translating Beowulf from its compact, metrical, alliterative form in a single surviving but damaged Old English manuscript into any modern language is considerable, [1] matched by the large number of attempts to make the poem approachable, [2] and the scholarly attention given to the problem.
Beowulf is an epic Old English poem, written in the strict metre of alliterative verse.Each line consists of two half-lines, separated by a caesura; each half-line contains two stresses but a variable number of syllables.
Beowulf (/ ˈ b eɪ ə w ʊ l f /; [1] Old English: Bēowulf [ˈbeːowuɫf]) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature.
Old English metre is the conventional name given to the poetic metre in which English language poetry was composed in the Anglo-Saxon period. The best-known example of poetry composed in this verse form is Beowulf, but the vast majority of Old English poetry belongs to the same tradition.
For instance, the Beowulf poet refers in three and a half lines to a Danish king as "lord of the Danes" (referring to the people in general), "king of the Scyldings" (the name of the specific Danish tribe), "giver of rings" (one of the king's functions is to distribute treasure), and "famous chief". Such variation, which the modern reader (who ...
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In Old English and Old Norse poetry, each line of alliterative verse was divided into an "a-verse" and "b-verse" hemistich with a strong caesura between. In Beowulf , there are only five basic types of hemistich, with some used only as initial hemistichs and some only as secondary hemistichs.