English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Series Number 96)

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. The Chapters Of This Book Form An Essay In A Type Of History I Call 'verse History,' A Concept Not Covered By Any Of The Usual Terms Applied To The Study Of Literature. Verse History Is The History Of A Tradition Of Composing Poems In A Certain Meter. It Is Distinct From Literary History, Because Two Works From One Genre, Place, Or Time, Even Two Works By One Poet, May Be In Different Meters. The Inverse Is Also True, In That Verse History Can Connect Poems From Very Different Local Contexts. The Relationship Between Elizabeth Barrett Browning's How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways And A Twenty-first-century Sonnet On Supercomputers Is More General Than Literary Influence, A Genre, Or A School -- 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. Eric Weiskott. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. This revisionary account of the 900-year-long history of a major poetic tradition sheds new light on poems from Beowulf to Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and challenges the idea that the alliterative tradition falls into two halves divided by the Norman Conquest.