Beowulf Lesson Extension

Arizona State Standards

Reading 2.1.7:
Explain how meaning is enhanced through alliteration.

Writing 3.5.1c:
Write a literary analysis that explains how meaning is enhanced through alliteration.

Quick View

Make a List
of 10 examples of alliteration from Beowulf, marking the repeated sounds.

Write a Paragraph
about how alliteration enhances meaning.

Objectives

When you are done, you should be better able to...

Identify instances of alliteration, and

Analyze whether alliteration enhances the meaning of a passage.

Rubric

I will grade your paper on whether it has...

a list of alliterations from Beowulf, accurately marked, and

a paragraph giving a thoughtful response to the prompt in the instructions.

Copyrights

Lesson, Background, Layout, and Source Code were created by me, Mark Greenberg. Use them as you wish; don't sell them.

The painting "Kane on the Golden Sea" by Frank Frazetta is used by me to teach under the "fair use" provision.

Standards
Quick View
Objectives
Rubric
Copyrights

Alliteration

Old Anglo-Saxon poetry uses a different kind of rhyming than we do. We use what is called end rhyme because it is the end of the words that sound the same: park/remark, notebook/unhook. Instead, the Anglo-Saxons used front rhyme, often called alliteration. In their poetry, words rhymed if they started with the same sound. For instance, take these two lines from the original Beowulf:

The translator alliterated throughout his English translation to keep the feel of the original Anglo-Saxon poetry. Here are the same two lines from Beowulf:

And now the timbers trembled and sang,
a hall-session that harrowed every Dane...

For this lesson extension, find ten more examples of alliteration. Color the alliterative sounds, as I have done in the example above. When you are done with the list, write a paragraph about how alliteration might enhance the poem. (The original Beowulf was a very long poem.) Give a few examples from Beowulf to support what you say. Send the list and the paragraph to me with this file name: E7YourNameBeowulfExt

NOTE: The list part of this assignment won't be in your own words since you are copying from the translation of Beowulf. However, your paper should not be similar to that of other students because there are nearly 200 different examples of alliteration in the passages you read.