a thoughtful web.
Good ideas and conversation. No ads, no tracking.   Login or Take a Tour!
comment by DaedalusInSicily
DaedalusInSicily  ·  3460 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Learning poetry by heart

I am quite acquainted with the AS literature: Beowulf, Caedmon's Hymn, The Dream of the Rood, etc. We had Anglo-Saxon Literature 101 at college, and it made me love this particularly strange, yet quite likeable language called Old English. I have my Chaucer in the somewhat original Middle English, and it takes quite an effort to read/understand it, without those annotations (which are missing in my paperback). I like this:

    I guess I prefer to memorize poetry by ear and mouth than by heart.

Will give my best to try and memorise some of the Mediaeval poetry. (Though, I know the beginning from the Wanderer, Oft to the Wanderer weary of exile / cometh God's pity compassionate love.)