Examples of Beowulf's Boasts from the Text Lesson Summary Frequently Asked Questions What are Beowulf's boasts? There are two kinds of Beowulf boastings. The first is the modern sense of boasting meaning bragging about something. The second kind of boast that can be seen by Beowulf is his...
There are many examples of litotes in the Old English epic of Beowulf. The first line of this excerpt contains the litotes: “Hildeburh had little cause to credit the Jutes.” This is a clear understatement, as the following lines describe the loss of her son and husband due to the Jutes...