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evidence of the artistic complexity of the work. At the same time, we may recognize in this pattern a narrative strategy that is common in oral storytelling—a point to which we shall return in the discussion of oral composition.
    In the meantime, it is also important to note that metaphors other than organic unity have proved fruitful in the quest to understand the structure of this kind of narrative. The medievalist John Leyerle has proposed an analogy with the intricate interlace patterns of Anglo-Saxon visual arts, which survive in manuscript illuminations and sculptures, though they may be found in other Northern art, from Ireland to Scandinavia. It seems plausible that both the verbal and visual arts would exhibit similar patterns, deriving from a common cultural imagination. But it is also critical that we bear in mind that the argument for interlacing in Beowulf is based on a metaphor that has its own limitations. For while the eye may travel through the intricate paths of a picture, it can also see the design all at once, as a whole. The same is not quite true of verbal arts, since they can only be experienced in some temporal sequence, and the effort to see a poem as a whole is an abstraction quite different from seeing a picture as a whole. Even so, the metaphor continues to provide fascinating suggestions about Anglo-Saxon poetry and the other arts.
    Another metaphor is that of ring-patterns in the narrative, which has been quite fully developed by John D. Niles and others. There are numerous repetitions in Beowulf, and often one account or reference to an event appears to circle back to an earlier account or reference to the same event. For example, there are several points at which Beowulf’s fight with Grendel is recounted, sometimes at length and sometimes in brief allusion. If we look at the narrative in linear terms, these recountings seem to be mere “repetitions” and therefore further evidence of the looseness of plotting in the work as a whole. But if we look at such patterns as rings in which the narrative circles back on itself in such instances, then it would appear that we have come rather closer to grasping the compositional principles that the poet-narrator is employing. Beyond that, once we recognize such ring patterns, we also begin to see that there are rings within rings, or even rings within rings within rings, in complex relations to one another. The figure of the ring is attractive in part because of the prevalence of literal rings and ring-giving throughout the story, but also because it provides an insight into the artfulness of the kind of narration that we find in Beowulf. Once again, we must face the fact that the epic does not always conform to the expectations of at least some modern readers. It was composed in another cultural milieu, according to artistic traditions different from ours, yet there are great rewards for us in discovering and appreciating this very “otherness” of the poem—as understood on its own terms.
    Poetic Forms
    Just as Beowulf employs narrative forms expressive of Anglo-Saxon culture, so also will we find poetic forms here that are characteristic of almost all poetry in Old English, but which are rare in poems written since that time. First of all, the poetic line typically consists of two verses, or half-lines, marked by a caesura, or pause, and linked by alliteration. Consider the following example: When Beowulf gives one of his many speeches, it is generally introduced with the line,
    Then Beowulf spoke, the son of Ecgtheow.
    Setting aside for the moment the formulaic nature of the line, we may note here that the line actually consists of two half-lines, or verses, separated by a caesural pause. For that reason, most editors of the original Old English put a blank space between the two verses:
    Beowulf mathelode bearn Ecgtheowes.
    Also, the sound of the “b” in the first verse is repeated, as alliteration, in the second verse (though not in the