A kenning works on the principle
as A is to B
so C is to D
and then you put A and D together, to form a 'kenning' describing C
To take a few familiar modern examples.
As a ship (A) is to the sea(B)
So is a camel (C) to the desert (D)
Hence one calls a camel (C) a 'ship of the desert'.(AD)
As blood (A) is to an (ordinary) body (B)
So rum (C) was to Nelson (D)
Hence rum (C) is called 'Nelson's blood'. (AD)
As Venice (built on an archipelago) (A) is to the south of Europe (B)
so Stockholm (built on an archipelago)(C) is to the north of Europe D)
Hecne Stockholm (C) is called 'Venice of the North'
As a (maritime) pilot (A) is to a harbour (B) (i.e. he helps bring you there
safely)
So a clergyman (C) is to heaven (D)
Hence a clergyman (C) (in nautical slang) is called a sky-pilot (AD)
Likewise, any expressions using the name of a writer or artist in one
culture to describe a writer or artist in another is an implied kenning
Thus if you call Mickiewicz the 'Polish Virgil', you imply the parallelism
As Virgil [A} wrote the patriotic epic of Rome [B]
So Mickiewicz [C] wrote the patriotic epic of Poland [D]
'Snail mail' is not a kenning, because one does not have the cross-over it
is a simple parallelism:
'As a snail [A] is to [something quick-B]],
so is hard-copy post[C] to e-mail.{D}
Linking A and C does not make a kenning!
Kennings appear to be indigenous to all early Germanic literatures. And -
although datings are for the most part difficult, most Old English poetry
would appear to be significantly older than Old Norse (Icelandic).
The eighteenth century knew very little about Old English - or indeed any
early Germanic poetry - see, for example, Gibbon's disparaging remarks about
the lost Gothic lays of Ermanaric. Transcription and publication of the
texts was mainly a 19th century phenomenon - and some poetic texts were not
properly edited and published until the 20th.
----- Original Message -----
From: Bob Cooper <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 10 September 2001 01:04
Subject: Re: New sub: the Domesday Hedge
> Hi (again) Steve,
> Yeh, I'm thinking all the more about this poem and how it relates to
poetry.
> I can see (and smell/and hear/and touch) the hedge you've given me in the
> poem you've written very clearly. If you're wanting to get right back to
the
> Domesday ordering of England (and so bypassing the 18th Century's
> pastoralia) then the alliteration/assonance/consonance features of the
poems
> construction and presentation comes to the fore. And the words you use
sound
> so juicy!
>
> I enjoyed the kennings too (but my Tardis seems to have malfunctioned a
> little because I put them into Northern English and Norse literature (and
> then only associated them with Iceland at the time of the Domesday
Survey).
> Maybe I should have remembered the Vikings wandered all over and that,
later
> on, Beowulf's writer uses them too! Does anyone (else, apart from Steve -
> and translators) use them today?. Is "snail mail" a kenning?
>
> And Joanna's made me wonder, too, what regard the 18th Century poets had
for
> Anglo Saxon poetry. I've sort of assumed they had a classical appreciation
> of poetry (that linked in with their architecture and art) and their
> references to Greek and Roman myths were ways of linking with their notion
> of what had been written in the past. But I don't really know... The
poetry
> canon has always been tightly controlled (and spasmodically objected to
and
> revised). If I only read what those who set the syllabus wanted me to read
I
> would never know what's possible and glimpseable and graspable with poems.
> So, like with the hedge, it's back to the roots!
> Bob
>
>
>
> >From: Steve Rudd <[log in to unmask]>
> >Reply-To: The Pennine Poetry Works <[log in to unmask]>
> >To: [log in to unmask]
> >Subject: New sub: the Domesday Hedge
> >Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2001 00:04:15 +0100
> >
> >This is about a hedge near our office. I doubt it really is a Domesday
> >Hedge (though there ARE some, in the English Landscape), it's probably
> >about 18th century, but it just seemed a good metaphor for the way a lot
of
> >things have been changed this year. Apologies if you knew this already
but
> >the "Bishop's Terrier" mentioned, is an ecclesiastical land survey
(Terrare
> >= land) not a holier-than-thou Jack Russell. Pity.
> >The Domesday Hedge
> >
> >Nine hundred and fifteen is the age of the hedge
> >
> >Numbered by nine hundred winters' blast,
> >
> >By those same summers, sap-fed:
> >
> >It has been storm-tossed, wind-ruffled, rain-drenched,
> >
> >With its white webs autumn-dancing with dew:
> >
> >And mouse and shrew scampering beneath, squeak and patter,
> >
> >Feet rustling the years past, their poor small bones
> >
> >Becoming lost white patterns on leaf-mould
> >
> >Dappling the meadow paddock each autumn
> >
> >As the wind moans and the Keck nods its Queen Anne Lace
> >
> >Over strip, ridge and furrow, over the dun fallows watched by owls,
> >
> >Where Ealdormen rode the lanes to the whale-road,
> >
> >Counting your yards and furlongs, marking plough turns and headlands.
> >
> >While branches swung, heavy with dawn-birds, your lines were
> >
> >Enumerated by Thanes, grain-boundaries scratched on vellum,
> >
> >Demesned and enclosed, sake, soc, and quitrent,
> >
> >Rogation-beaten, part of the Bishop's Terrier,
> >
> >Boxing fields tilled by Shires with chestnut-buffed tackle.
> >
> >Bordered by lost generations of cow-parsley,
> >
> >Michelmas, Candlemas, Plough-Mondayed, and moon-wintered.
> >
> >
> >* * *
> >
> >How many more Springs, I wonder, will we see
> >
> >You quarter the field of vert proper, its fleurs-de-lys green-laid
> >
> >With your traceried escutcheon; now that a new plague
> >
> >Blackens your land, and shepherds pipe a bitter eclogue?
> >
> >And has the Norman's misnomer come home to roost at last, come true,
> >
> >As the smoke rises over silent byres, over dung still body-warm,
> >
> >And you become less of a hedge, an edge, and more anachronism?
> >
> >
> >
>
>
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