English Alliterative Verse

Poetic Tradition and Literary History

Eric Weiskott

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781107169654
• eBook ISBN: 9781316766903
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: English Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Series page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Evolution of the Alliterative B-Verse, 650–1550
• Introduction: The Durable Alliterative Tradition
• Chapter 1 Beowulf and Verse History
• Chapter 2 Prologues to Old English Poetry
• Chapter 3 Lawman, the Last Old English Poet and the First Middle English Poet
• Chapter 4 Prologues to Middle English Alliterative Poetry
• Chapter 5 The Erkenwald Poet’s Sense of History
• Chapter 6 The Alliterative Tradition 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
• Bibliography
• Index