Show how the respective codes of honour in 'The Battle of Maldon' and 'The Charge of the Light Brigade can be compared and contrasted. What differences in verse-style account for the different effects of each poem?

Authors Avatar

Tom Makey 11R

Poetry Coursework

Show how the respective codes of honour in ‘The Battle of Maldon’ and ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade can be compared and contrasted. What differences in verse-style account for the different effects of each poem?

There are a number of rules of the code of honour that are shown in ‘The Battle of Maldon’ and they start off straight away. On the second line, the first rule is shown:

“Then Byrthnoth ordered every warrior to dismount,

drive off his horse and go forward into battle

with faith in his skills and with bravery.”

This means that he is not going to give his men the chance to run away. Also, it means that they should never give in and always fight for their country. The last line says that every warrior should have faith in his skills and bravery. If you have faith in your skills then that is half way to bravery. The problem is that Byrthnoth is too brave for his own good and it makes him make a stupid decision. The main example of this is letting the Vikings across the river at the start. The writer does not praise this decision:

‘Then Byrthnoth gave word that all his warriors

should walk with their shields to the river bank.’

The next important part is where Offa’s young son sends his falcon away:

“He sent his best falcon flying from his wrist

to the safety of the forest and strode into the fight;”

This is because his best falcon is no longer needed as it cannot help him in battle. Only skill and bravery can. This is shown by the last words, when he strode into the fight. The next sentence says: “One could well see that the youth would not be weak in the turmoil of battle.”

This shows that all of the warriors had faith in their earl, even young, inexperienced people.

The writer, in Anglo-Saxon, uses a lot on alliteration. This cannot be translated very easily into English, especially with the alliteration still there. There is translated one sentence which uses alliteration to great use to describe what the warriors do:

Join now!

“He would pierce and parry before his prince.”

This means that any warrior would do anything to protect his prince, even if his prince is dead, but it is expressed more boldly when alliteration is used. This is very obvious alliteration while others are less obvious:

“Slashed by the sword, he chose to sleep.”

This is still quite obvious but not as much the first instance. This alliteration was used even more in the pre-translated version of the ‘Battle of Maldon’. Here is a sentence in Anglo-Saxon, then its literal translation and then what it had been changed to so ...

This is a preview of the whole essay