Metonymy in Beowulf

Beowulf is one of the longest surviving poems in Old English dating back to almost 700 A.D., which depicts the story of a great Anglo-Saxon hero. The poem was originally composed orally and was remembered throughout generations which is why the poem might differ from modern English poems. It is also a reason why other stories were mixed with Beowulf itself, although the main plot remained the same. Beowulf is the story of a true hero, a hero who is flawed yet used his own weaknesses to his own advantage. He also exposes the fear of the Anglo-Saxons being death, failure, and the future was mixed with the fear of the unknown phenomena. The message of the poem is that evil in all its essence destroys itself because good can destroy anything. This goes into the final message to really be about Christianity due to all the references to the Old Testament in the poem. One instance is when Grendel is said to be a descendant of Cain and God is spoken for as a creator of all things. The poem uses all kinds of literary devices such as kennings, litotes, metonymy along with others. A metonymy is in other words a misnomer meaning that the name of an object or a concept is replaced with a word closely related to it. Metonymies are also considered rhetorical devices making them important to English literature. The main reason why metonymies are important is that they allow the poet to express something in a more unique way that has multiple meanings for the reader to interpret. This has been around for decades and it as used to help poets from ancient Greek express themselves eloquently. In poems like Beowulf which was written in old English metonymy is no stranger to it. In Beowulf, we see many examples of metonymy such as when the word “iron” is used instead of the word “sword” another example would be in lines 1532–1534 “The keen, inlaid, worm-looped-patterned steel was hurled to the ground: he would have to rely on the might of his arm.” This is a metonymy because the steel is in reference to a sword or a battle (general idea). The author of this poem uses such language to describe things in a more poetic way, this technique was incredibly popular in old English because the use of metonymy grabs the reader’s attention in different ways that allow them to understand the objective of the poem.