Swan-Road

     I actually really enjoyed reading some of the history behind English writing in the Williams article.  Besides the fact that I think historical influence on writing are intensely interesting, I really enjoyed seeing an example of what we might write in "modern Anglo-Saxon."  After reading Beowulf and getting to see that kind of language and some of the stylistic devices used in old pieces of writing, it got me thinking about how language has changed and how it keeps changing.

     Some of the devices used in Beowulf encouraged me to see what I could pull back into my own writing.  As a specific example, the use of kenning was something that really intrigued me.  Being able to replace "ocean" with "swan-road" or something similar really sparked my imagination.  There are so many ways of incorporating devices like this into modern writing, kenning is not so different than metaphor (although I think it is capable of something so interestingly different.  You can make the language so powerful and compact by giving your reader "swan-road" instead of saying the ocean looked like a road for swans.  One way the language falls flat, but by having the ability to quickly describe a metaphorical relationship and move on, an author can make it work.)  That was a longer tangent than I expected, so I'll get to a point:  if we consciously consider our language we can find so many ways of making it new and exciting, and that is something that as a teacher or a student, is hard to pass up.