5 - Rhetoric and style

Summary

Preliminary points

Ælfric's rhythmical style has occasioned a vast bibliography, primarily centred on its inspiration and its place within Old English literature. In the last century and a half, scholars have debated whether Ælfric was a prose writer, or whether he was an innovator in poetic trends, whether his style developed in imitation of the Latin rhythmical prose, or whether its independence can be proved. They have also posed the vexed question of the role of his writing style within the larger context of Old English and ultimately of other vernacular literatures. As Nichols observed, the problem at the root of such difficulties is that Ælfric never provided a definition of his own style in the Lives of Saints, whereas he described his style in the Catholic Homilies as simple prose. What seems to be universally accepted, however, is the fact that Ælfric's style developed gradually. The turningpoint of his style is conventionally placed at CH II, 10, the Life of Cuthbert, allegedly inspired by Bede's metrical Vita. Even though Bede's work abounds with arcane vocabulary, it seems increasingly possible that Ælfric used it at least as extensively as the prose Vita or indeed the anonymous text. That Ælfric found inspiration in Bede is more than likely, but it is evident from the style of his early homilies that he had already been experimenting with alliterative prose from the beginning of his writing career.

The present study is greatly indebted to previous scholarship and will rely on Pope's widely-cited definition of Ælfric's style, which still remains valid today:

The term rhythmical prose as applied to Ælfric's compositions must be understood to refer to a loosely metrical form resembling in basic structural principles the alliterative verse of the Old English poets, but differing markedly in the character and range of its rhythms as in strictness of alliterative practice, and altogether distinct in diction, rhetoric and tone. It is better regarded as a mildly ornamental, rhythmically ordered prose than as a debased, pedestrian poetry.

Like the majority of the Lives of Saints, LB is written in Ælfric's characteristic rhythmical style, and shows all the peculiarities discussed in Pope's work. These may usefully be examined with a methodological approach normally reserved for Old English poetic compositions, including the analysis of alliterative devices, paronomasia and other figures of speech.