05 / 11 / 2017

32921 notes

valakiir

prokopetz

petermorwood:

fozmeadows:

geekygothgirl:

culumacilinte:

glimmerbulb:

collaterlysisters:

prokopetz:

One of the distinctive features of Old Norse poetry is the use of kenning: a circumlocutory device in which a straightforward noun is replaced with an allusive phrase.

For example, a ship might be referred to as a “wave’s horse”; a sword, a “wound-serpent”; a shield, “the shame of swords”, and so forth. Sometimes, kennings could be embedded in other kennings - thus, one might have “feeder of war-gulls” = “feeder of ravens” = “warrior”; this is known as a doubled or extended kenning.

Though many conventions of English literature can be traced back to Old Norse roots, kenning isn’t much encountered these days - at least, not in most genres. There’s one particular genre where the art of kenning is alive and well, though.

I’m speaking, of course, of erotic fanfic.

Whether you’re referring to a penis as a “porn-truncheon” or a vagina as “squish-pocket” (both examples I’ve seen employed in all apparent seriousness, incidentally), that perfectly fits the form and function of a kenning. Indeed, these examples even adhere to the idiosyncratic grammatical structure of many Old Norse kennings, with the base word being modified by an uninfected noun determinant inserted as a compound prefix.

Euphemisms for sex acts, meanwhile, can be even more baroque, forming multi-level allusions in the manner of doubled/extended kennings. “To ride the baloney pony”, for example, employs the act of riding a horse as an allusion to penetrative sexual intercourse - but the contained phrase “baloney pony” is, itself, a kenning of the simple type, with “pony” as the base word and “baloney” as the determinant, making the whole phrase a doubled kenning.

There are practical reasons for this sort of practice, of course; e.g., complex euphemisms can help sexually explicit works sneak through content filters. Still, it’s kind of fascinating that smutty fanfic has managed to preserve - in virtually unaltered state - a poetic form that’s otherwise been largely extinct in English literature for the better part of a thousand years.

amazing

This is the kind of content I want on my dash!!

*head asplode* Right, I love kennings in old Anglo-Saxon and Norse poetry, I love them, and it NEVER OCCURRED TO ME that that thing that terrible porn does is kenning. *falls over laughing* I LOVE IT.

*props chin in hands* Talk dirty and historical linguistic devices to me baby. 

this is what the internet is made for

Another fun part is that the kenning exists in its own right.

A simile uses comparison:  like a / as a… “It was like a / as big as a baby’s arm holding an apple.”

A metaphor is straight replacement of one term for another… “It was a baby’s arm holding an apple” - though that’s a peculiar image better suited to the nastier Greek myths of the Tantalus / Atreus / Medea variety than a sex scene in anything.

The kenning would be something like “apple-fisted infant limb”, and would be an allusion used enough, or clear enough, to be understood without further elaboration.

In the same way, when using “baloney pony” it helps to know that “baloney” is a kind of salami, not “boloney” a kind of nonsense.

Bologna pogna, however, is just silly whatever way you slice it.

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