Scops: A Living History :: English Literature Dictionary Essays

Scops A Living History A scop is defined by the Oxford face Dictionary as an Old English poet or minstrel. However, scops were simply so much more than that to the k shadowly world. They were the only means of entertainment for the stack of the time. There was no television or Internet to escape to, and books were not readily available. Most medieval people in the eighth with twelfth centuries could not read or write,so the scops would tell amusing stories or tales of heroic deeds to the music of their lies. The stories would be chanted, giving great purity to those mentioned in the oral recitations, and the scops song also provided a memory of the agriculture for those who would come after. According to Kemp Malone, At an early date Germanic kings began to hang in professional poets. (p.75) These scops would travel the kingdom, telling their stories and singing their songs. They would have a harp or later a lute these were the tools of thei r trade. Creating worlds and places many Anglo- Saxons never sawing machine because few people ever left the place they were born, scops were important fixtures to the medieval world. The scops opened up the outside world to medieval people and meshed the imagination too. In Beowulf, scops are mentioned in recounting Beowulfs deeds and amusing the men in the mead- halls. Like courtly fools, they would make their audition laugh. However, unlike the fools or court jesters, a scop was not there moreover to entertain. They were a living history of the times and places of the past and present. Their ability to gyp many lines of poetry or stories has kept them alive throughout the ages so that we still have them today. The stories were sometimes embellished and altered to be more fire to the listeners. For example, in Beowulf, there is the story of our hero fighting sea monsters as he swims across an ocean and spending seven days and night in the cold sea. The Wanderer is a tale tha t mostly apt(predicate) would have been recited by a scop. The stories that the scops would tell often were elegies for the heroic dead.