![]() How is one to periphrase him in terms of these things? Thus, by calling him accomplisher or performer of his goings or his conduct, of his battles or sea-voyages or huntings or weapons or ships. How should man be periphrased? By his works, by that which he gives or receives or does he may also be periphrased in terms of his property, those things which he possesses, and, if he be liberal, of his liberality likewise in terms of the families from which he descended, as well as of those which have sprung from him. Snorri gives traditional examples and also opens the way for creating correct new kennings: The list is systematized so as to function as a practical thesaurus for the use of poets wishing to write in the genuine old manner, and structured as an FAQ. Half of the Prose Edda, the Skáldskaparmál ("language of poetry creation" or "creative language of poets"), is a manual of traditional Icelandic poetic diction, containing a list of kennings. ![]() the Younger Edda around 1200 A.D., partially to explain the older Edda and poetic diction. In Iceland, Snorri Sturluson wrote the Prose Edda, a.k.a. Therefore, the order of words for poetry as well as the choice of words reflected a greater tendency to combine words to form metaphor. Also, poetry often contained riddles (e.g. In Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse, poetry often involved exceptionally compressed metaphors called " kennings", such as whale-road for "the sea", or sword-weather for "battle". Germanic languages developed their own form of poetic diction. What helps most, however, to render the Diction at once clear and non-prosaic is the use of the lengthened, curtailed, and altered forms of words. These, the strange word, the metaphor, the ornamental equivalent, etc., will save the language from seeming mean and prosaic, while the ordinary words in it will secure the requisite clearness. A certain admixture, accordingly, of unfamiliar terms is necessary. The clearest indeed is that made up of the ordinary words for things, but it is mean. The perfection of Diction is for it to be at once clear and not mean. He also warned against over-reliance on strange words: He went on to define meanness of style as the deliberate avoidance of unusual words. In his Poetics, he stated that the perfect style for writing poetry was one that was clear without meanness. The first writer to discuss poetic diction in the Western tradition was Aristotle (384 BC-322 BC). Thus, the diction employed by Horace and Ovid will differ from that used by Julius Caesar, both in terms of word choice and in terms of word form. In Latin, poetic diction involved not only a vocabulary somewhat uncommon in everyday speech, but syntax and inflections rarely seen elsewhere. Thus, tragedy and history would employ different Greek dialects. ![]() In Classical Greek literature, for example, certain linguistic dialects were seen as appropriate for certain types of poetry. In some languages, "poetic diction" is quite a literal dialect use.
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