Alliterative metre and Medieval English literary history

Journal article

The years 2016 and 2017 have respectively witnessed the publication of two stimulating Cambridge University Press monographs on medieval English literary history: Eric Weiskott’s English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (2016) and Ian Cornelius’s Reconstructing Alliterative Verse: The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter (2017). There is much that these two books have in common. They are both fashionably written, both have much to say about metre and, most importantly, they both take as their fundamental premise the notion of an uninterrupted tradition of alliterative poetry from the Old to the late Middle English period that excludes Ælfric of Eynsham’s rhythmical-alliterative prose. In this regard, they run counter to the established opinion among literary historians, most of whom still adhere to the views set out by Norman Blake. In an influential essay published in 1969, Blake contended that fourteenth-century alliterative verse evolved not out of classical Old English poetry (which he believed to have died out soon after the Conquest), but out of the loose style of versification of early Middle English poets, the origin of which Blake in turn attributed to Ælfric’s characteristic style. As several scholars have contended,1 however, there are compelling lexical and metrical arguments both for a continuous tradition between Old and late Middle English alliterative verse, and for the exclusion of Ælfric’s rhythmical prose from this tradition.2 Scholars who find Blake’s argument unconvincing, such as the present reviewer, will therefore welcome the opposition to that view presented by Weiskott and Cornelius.

Authors: Pascual, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Spanish Association of English Studies
• Journal: Journal of the Spanish Association for Anglo-American Studies
• Volume: 40
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 221-230
• Publication date: 2018-12-20
• DOI: 10.28914/atlantis-2018-40.2.11
• ISSN: 0210-6124