Weekly Assignment 1: Reading for Style
ENG 3010
As a technical literary term, “style” describes the compositional habits that shape
texts and give them a unity of feel or texture. We might say that style is a subset of
form. Style can be broken down into many components: diction (word choice),
syntax (word order), grammar, ornament, and more. Style may suit the subject
matter or, at times, it may be in tension with it. The following exercise approaches
Beowulf through a focus on grammatical style. In poetry, the weight of meaning can
be distributed variously over the elements of grammar. Does the poet stress things
and qualities, or actions? Nouns and adjectives, or verbs and adverbs? (You might
want to use a grammar handbook to review the parts of speech. Try this review
sheet: https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/730/01/)
Rewrite lines 710-716 of Heaney’s translation of Beowulf, conveying the same
information but shifting the information around so it weighs differently on the
grammar. Do this once for nouns and adjectives, and a second time for verbs and
adverbs.
For example, here are lines 12-14 (Heaney’s original):
Afterward a boy-child was born to Shield,
a cub in the yard, a comfort sent
by God to that nation.
Now, rewritten with weight on verbs and adverbs:
God comforted them and afterward Shield
fathered one who boyishly played and
prowled nearby.
Rewritten with the weight of meaning placed mostly on nouns and adjectives:
The late birth of a boy-child for Shield—
a cub in the yard, a comfort from a compassionate God
for that nation.
Which are the important, textured, eye-catching words in your passage? Move them
around and think about how the emphasis changes. Now, which of your “shiftings”
sounds most like the poem? On what parts of speech does the Beowulf poet place
most of the poem’s weight of meaning? Write a paragraph on the relation between
the poem’s “content” and its grammatical style: would you say there’s a good fit
between the style and the content? In total, your assignment will consist of your
two rewrites of the passage and one paragraph of reflection on style and content.
You’ll need to submit this assignment by the beginning of class on Thursday (1/30).
You can either email it to me before class begins
(stephanie.hershinow@baruch.cuny.edu) or bring a hard copy with you to class.
(Make sure you save your own copy on your computer, email or on the cloud.)