Studies In The Metre Of Alliterative Verse

'For editors of alliterative verse, this book is essential reading'. Susanna Fein, Speculum, lxxxv (2010), pp. 457 - 458. 'A model of meticulousness and sensible argument'. Thomas Bredehoft, Review of English Studies, lx (2009), pp. 802 - 804. The volume provides a comprehensive study of the metre of the unrhymed poems of the Alliterative Revival. It includes detailed analysis and discussion of line endings, alliterative patterning, historical grammar, the relationship between linguistic stress and beat, and presents new discoveries regarding the metrical rules of the a-verse. Readers interested in the metre and textual criticism of alliterative poems, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Siege of Jerusalem and the Alexander fragments, will find this monograph 'an outstanding, scholarly, assured and important work' (Ruth Kennedy, Royal Holloway, University of London).

'For editors of alliterative verse, this book is essential reading'. Susanna Fein, Speculum, lxxxv (2010), pp. 457 - 458. 'A model of meticulousness and sensible argument'. Thomas Bredehoft, Review of English Studies, lx (2009), pp. 802 - 804. The volume provides a comprehensive study of the metre of the unrhymed poems of the Alliterative Revival. It includes detailed analysis and discussion of line endings, alliterative patterning, historical grammar, the relationship between linguistic stress and beat, and presents new discoveries regarding the metrical rules of the a-verse. Readers interested in the metre and textual criticism of alliterative poems, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Siege of Jerusalem and the Alexander fragments, will find this monograph 'an outstanding, scholarly, assured and important work' (Ruth Kennedy, Royal Holloway, University of London).

This book explores the history and development of English alliterative meter, and considers why the form has remained so enigmatic.

What would English literary history look like if the unit of measure were not the political reign but the poetic tradition? The earliest poems in English were written in alliterative verse, the meter of Beowulf. Alliterative meter preceded tetrameter, which first appeared in the twelfth century, and tetrameter in turn preceded pentameter, the five-stress line that would become the dominant English verse form of modernity, though it was invented by Chaucer in the 1380s. While this chronology is accurate, Eric Weiskott argues, the traditional periodization of literature in modern scholarship distorts the meaning of meters as they appeared to early poets and readers. In Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650, Weiskott examines the uses and misuses of these three meters as markers of literary time, "medieval" or "modern," though all three were in concurrent use both before and after 1500. In each section of the book, he considers two of the traditions through the prism of a third element: alliterative meter and tetrameter in poems of political prophecy; alliterative meter and pentameter in William Langland's Piers Plowman and early blank verse; and tetrameter and pentameter in Chaucer, his predecessors, and his followers. Reversing the historical perspective in which scholars conventionally view these authors, Weiskott reveals Langland to be metrically precocious and Chaucer metrically nostalgic. More than a history of prosody, Weiskott's book challenges the divide between medieval and modern literature. Rejecting the premise that modernity occurred as a specifiable event, he uses metrical history to renegotiate the trajectories of English literary history and advances a narrative of sociocultural change that runs parallel to metrical change, exploring the relationship between literary practice, social placement, and historical time.

Alliteration occurs in a wide variety of contexts in stress-initial languages, including Icelandic, Finnish and Mongolian. It can be found in English from Beowulf to The Sun . Nevertheless, alliteration remains an unexamined phenomenon. This pioneering volume takes alliteration as its central focus across a variety of languages and domains.

What would English literary history look like if the unit of measure were not the political reign but the poetic tradition? The earliest poems in English were written in alliterative verse, the meter of Beowulf. Alliterative meter preceded tetrameter, which first appeared in the twelfth century, and tetrameter in turn preceded pentameter, the five-stress line that would become the dominant English verse form of modernity, though it was invented by Chaucer in the 1380s. While this chronology is accurate, Eric Weiskott argues, the traditional periodization of literature in modern scholarship distorts the meaning of meters as they appeared to early poets and readers. In Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650, Weiskott examines the uses and misuses of these three meters as markers of literary time, "medieval" or "modern," though all three were in concurrent use both before and after 1500. In each section of the book, he considers two of the traditions through the prism of a third element: alliterative meter and tetrameter in poems of political prophecy; alliterative meter and pentameter in William Langland's Piers Plowman and early blank verse; and tetrameter and pentameter in Chaucer, his predecessors, and his followers. Reversing the historical perspective in which scholars conventionally view these authors, Weiskott reveals Langland to be metrically precocious and Chaucer metrically nostalgic. More than a history of prosody, Weiskott's book challenges the divide between medieval and modern literature. Rejecting the premise that modernity occurred as a specifiable event, he uses metrical history to renegotiate the trajectories of English literary history and advances a narrative of sociocultural change that runs parallel to metrical change, exploring the relationship between literary practice, social placement, and historical time.

This volume contributes to the study of early English poetics. In these essays, several related approaches and fields of study radiate outward from poetics, including stylistics, literary history, word studies, gender studies, metrics, and textual criticism. By combining and redirecting these traditional scholarly methods, as well as exploring newer ones such as object-oriented ontology and sound studies, these essays demonstrate how poetry responds to its intellectual, literary, and material contexts. The contributors propose to connect the small (syllables, words, and phrases) to the large (histories, emotions, faiths, secrets). In doing so, they attempt to work magic on the texts they consider: turning an ordinary word into something strange and new, or demonstrating texture, difference, and horizontality where previous eyes had perceived only smoothness, sameness, and verticality.