Reconstructing Alliterative Verse
The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter

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

Ian Cornelius (Author)

9781107154100, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 July 2017

234 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'Reconstructing Alliterative Verse: The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter advances our understanding ... as well as advanced students will find his discussion helpful. Academic libraries supporting English and Germanic studies programs should obtain a copy.' William F. Hodapp, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART)

The poetry we call 'alliterative' is recorded in English from the seventh century until the sixteenth, and includes Caedmon's 'Hymn', Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Piers Plowman. These are some of the most admired works of medieval English literature, and also among the most enigmatic. The formal practice of alliterative poets exceeded the conceptual grasp of medieval literary theory; theorists are still playing catch-up today. This book explains the distinctive nature of alliterative meter, explores its differences from subsequent accentual-syllabic forms, and advances a reformed understanding of medieval English literary history. The startling formal variety of Piers Plowman and other Middle English alliterative poems comes into sharper focus when viewed in diachronic perspective: the meter was in transition; to understand it, we need to know where it came from and where it was headed at the moment it died out.

Introduction: what was alliterative poetry?
1. An unwritten medieval treatise
2. The accentual paradigm in early English metrics
3. The origins of the alliterative revival
4. The fourteenth-century meter
5. The end of alliterative verse
Epilogue: Edmund Spenser's poetry lesson.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]