Research project Binarism in Early Germanic Verse: A Comparative Study of Old Norse and Old English Poetry
How did poets in the Norse world and Anglo-Saxon England create memorable and expressive verse? The project compares word pairs and related binary expressions – recurring and distinctive features of Old Norse and Old English poetry – to shed light on shared traditions, cultural differences, and the building blocks of early Germanic poetic language.
Text from Neckel, Gustav & Kuhn, Hans (red.). 1983. Edda: die Lieder des Codex Regius, I: Text, 5 uppl. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg. Photo: Giorgio Basciu.
This postdoctoral project investigates one of the most pervasive and stylistically significant features of early Germanic poetry: syndetic constructions, that is, coordinated pairings such as mæki ok skjöldr (‘sword and shield’) or freond and feond (‘friend and foe’) that convey a unitary meaning and carry strong rhetorical and cultural value. While these constructions have long been noted in both Old Norse and Old English traditions, they have rarely been examined within a unified comparative framework.
Building on the analytical model developed in my doctoral research, the project brings Old Norse and Old English poetic corpora into systematic comparison. It aims to identify both shared compositional principles and tradition-specific developments, with particular attention to word order, structural extension beyond the verse line, and subtle acoustic patterning. In doing so, it seeks to contribute to a more precise understanding of how poetic language operates across related but distinct medieval traditions.
Funding
The project is funded by the Sweden–America Foundation and will be hosted at the University of Pennsylvania (Professor Caz Batten), with co-hosting at Harvard University (Professor Daniel Donoghue).