English alliterative verse : poetic tradition and literary history / Eric Weiskott.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weiskott, Eric, author.

Series:

Cambridge studies in medieval literature ; 96.

Cambridge studies in medieval literature ; 96

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English poetry--Old English, ca. 450-1100--History and criticism.

English poetry.

English poetry--Middle English, 1100-1500--History and criticism.

English language--Versification.

English language.

Alliteration--Poetry.

Alliteration.

Poetics--History--To 1500.

Poetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiv, 236 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2016.

Summary:

English Alliterative Verse tells the story of the medieval poetic tradition that includes Beowulf, Piers Plowman, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, stretching from the eighth century, when English poetry first appeared in manuscripts, to the sixteenth century, when alliterative poetry ceased to be composed. Eric Weiskott draws on the study of meter to challenge the traditional division of medieval English literary history into Old English and Middle English periods. The two halves of the alliterative tradition, divided by the Norman Conquest of 1066, have been studied separately since the nineteenth century; this book uses the history of metrical form and its cultural meanings to bring the two halves back together. In combining literary history and metrical description into a new kind of history he calls 'verse history', Weiskott reimagines the historical study of poetics.

Contents:

Evolution of the alliterative b-verse, 650-1550

Introduction: the durable alliterative tradition

Beowulf and verse history

The evolution of alliterative meter, 950-1100

Verse history and language history

Beowulf and the unknown shape of Old English literary history

Prologues to Old English poetry

Old English prologues and Old English poetic styles

The Beowulf prologue and the history of style

Lawman, the last Old English poet and the first Middle English poet

Lawman and the evolution of alliterative meter

Lawman at a crossroads in literary history

Prologues to Middle English alliterative poetry

The continuity of the alliterative tradition, 1250-1340

Excursus: Middle English alliterating stanzaic poetry

Middle English prologues, romaunce, and Middle English poetic styles

The Erkenwald poet's sense of history

A meditation on histories

St. Erkenwald and the idea of alliterative verse in late medieval England

Authors, styles, and the search for a Middle English canon

The alliterative tradition in the sixteenth century

The alliterative tradition in its tenth century

Unmodernity: the idea of alliterative verse in the sixteenth century

Conclusion: whose tradition?

Note to the appendices

Appendix A. Fifteen late Old English poems omitted from ASPR

Appendix B. Six early Middle English alliterative poems

Appendix C. An early Middle English alliterative poem in Latin

Glossary of technical terms.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 28 Nov 2016).

ISBN:

1-316-76186-X

1-316-76690-X

1-316-76618-7

1-316-76762-0

1-316-71867-0

1-316-76834-1

1-316-77050-8