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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.
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R E C O N S T RU C T I N G A L L I T E R AT I V E V E R S E
The poetry we call “alliterative” is recorded in English from the seventh century until the sixteenth, and includes Cædmon’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. Ian Cornelius is Edward Surtz, S.J., Associate Professor in the Department of English at Loyola University Chicago. His other work includes essays on Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy, the medieval disciplines of grammar and rhetoric, the English Rising of 1381, and Piers Plowman. He previously taught at Yale University.
c a mbr i dge stu di es i n m edi eva l lite rature General Editor Alastair Minnis, Yale University Editorial Board Zygmunt G. Barański, University of Cambridge Christopher C. Baswell, Barnard College and Columbia University John Burrow, University of Bristol Mary Carruthers, New York University Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania Roberta Frank, Yale University Simon Gaunt, King’s College, London Steven Kruger, City University of New York Nigel Palmer, University of Oxford Winthrop Wetherbee, Cornell University Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Fordham University This series of critical books seeks to cover the whole area of literature written in the major medieval languages – the main European vernaculars, and medieval Latin and Greek – during the period c.1100–1500. Its chief aim is to publish and stimulate fresh scholarship and criticism on medieval literature, special emphasis being placed on understanding major works of poetry, prose, and drama in relation to the contemporary culture and learning which fostered them. Recent titles in the series Lee Manion Narrating the Crusades: Loss and Recovery in Medieval and Early Modern English Literature Daniel Wakelin Scribal Correction and Literary Craft: English Manuscripts 1375–1510 Jon Whitman (ed.) Romance and History: Imagining Time from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period Virginie Greene Logical Fictions in Medieval Literature and Philosophy Michael Johnston and Michael Van Dussen (eds.) The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches Tim William Machan (ed.) Imagining Medieval English: Language Structures and The