kenning

The language, compared to that of our own vastly more complex time, was undeveloped; but for use in poetry, especially, there were a great number of periphrastic but vividly picturesque metaphorical synonyms (technically called kennings ).

With acrostics, kennings, rebus poems and haikus included, this anthology will also work well as an aide to teachers as they introduce pupils to different types of poem.

This critical tack has much in common with Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon "kenning." In Roberts' words, "'kennings' like full riddles are games of knowledge: they ask, in the first sense, 'do you know what this is?' and more broadly they open more puzzling questions about the certainty, ground and transparency of all knowledge" (42).

A similar brief mention is provided in another article by the same author, "Borges' Icelandic Subtext: The Saga Model" (385-86) while Sigmn's article on Borges and kennings, '"El verso incorruptible': Jorge Luis Borges and the Poetic Art of the Icelandic Skalds," outlines the basics of kenning-lore and the strong influence that these may have had on Borges' oeuvre, perhaps the most noteworthy example being 'Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius." La alucinacion de Gylfi does not come into the latter and is merely named in Margret Jonsdottir's "Borges y la literatura islandesa medieval" (124) and Vladimir Brljak's fascinating article, "Borges and the North" (110), in which the path of northern influence is traced through Borges's life.

The modules--which can be photocopied or scanned--range across a recognisable field of poetic genres from kennings to blank verse and they are preceded by what could be called foundation modules like 'Training the Senses'.

(from left) radio presenter Sam Lloyd with Colliers Land Rover service manager Steve Kennings and Land Rover UK Customer Services director Terry Hill at the award ceremony.

"We are delighted Kennings has chosen to take more vehicles from us.

The topic of chapter 4 is Old English poetic vocabulary and semantics, emphasizing the substantive use of adjectives, affixation, compounding, loanwords, kennings, metaphor, wordplay, and alliterative collocations.

A kenning is commonly a simple stock compound such as "whale-path" or "swan road" for "sea"; "God's beacon" for "sun"; or "ring-giver" for "king." Many kennings are allusions that become unintelligible to later generations.

Some definitions are a bit odd ('Ballads were tales told by wandering troubadours': 'kennings use two words to describe a more straightforward word, but in a poetic way'), but some of the comments are very perceptive.

Sarah Kennings, aged 29from Northfield, said: "It was excellent.

Their poems were descriptive, occasional, and subjective, their meters strictly syllabic instead of free and variable, and their language ornamented with heiti and kennings. (Heiti ["names"] are uncompounded poetic nouns, fanciful art words rather than everyday terms--e.g., "brand" for "sword." Kennings are metaphorical circumlocutions such as "wave-horse" for "ship.")