SOURCE: “The Formulaic Style of Beowulf,” in Rereading “Beowulf”: An Introduction to the Poem, Its Background, and Its Style, edited by J. D. A. Ogilvy and Donald C. Baker, University of Oklahoma Press, 1983, pp. 137-58.
In the following essay, Ogilvy surveys the formulaic methods used by Old English poets and examines the ways in which such methods—including the use of traditional epithets and phrases which probably originated in orally composed and transmitted poetry—are utilized in Beowulf.
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