Middle English Alliterative Poetry and Its Literary Background - Seven Essays

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Asher

Seven specially commissioned essays examine Middle English alliterative poetry and its literary background. The volume addresses questions of context, including the validity of notions such as an “alliterative revival” or “survival,” the metrical and social-cultural origins of Middle English forms, and the multilingual sources and influences shaping fourteenth-century poets. It also considers manuscript circumstances, audience and copying practices, regional versus national phenomena, and relationships between unrhymed and rhymed traditions, prose, and stylistic understanding.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages172

Reading Time4 h 25 min

AccessFree to download

Preface

Middle English Alliterative Poetry: An Introduction

The problem of classification and chronology

Unrhymed corpus and questions of context

Notes

A Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources

# MIDDLE ENGLISH ALLITERATIVE POETRYAND ITS LITERARY BACKGROUND Seven Essays Edited by David Lawton Contributors 1982 Published by D.S.Brewer240 Hills Road,Cambridgean imprint of Boydell &Brewer LtdPO Box 9,Woodbridge,Suffolk IP123DFand by Biblio81 Adams Drive,Totowa,NJ 07512 U.S.A, # British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Middle English alliterative poetry and its literary background. 1.English poetry-Middle English,1100-1500-History and criticism I,Lawton,David821.109PR317.A/ ISBN 0-85991-097-0 PR3175541982 2 I Middle English Alliterative Poetry:An Introduction II Early Middle English Alliterative Verse III The Allitenaive Revival:Origins andSocial Backgrounds IV The Anglo-Norman Background toAlliterative Romance V Alliterative Romance and the FrenchTnadition VI The Manuscripts VⅡ The Audience and Public of 'PiersPlowman'AbbreviationsNotes A Note on Primary Sources A Select Bibliography of Secondary Sources David Lawton 1 Angus McIntosh 20 Derek Pearsall 34 Rosalind Field 54 W.R.J.Barron 70 88A.I.Doyle Anne Middleton 101 124 125 155 160 ## Preface The seven essays that make up this volume are new and were speciallycommissioned.While not seeking to be comprehensive or quite a col-laborative history,the volume is designed to be coherent.Its title isintended accurately to reflect its purpose:which is to bring into focusMiddle English alliterative poetry,more sharply than would be possible byany one author,in its several contexts.I have believed that such a volumeis necessary ever since I began work in this field as a graduate student in1971.This is the kind of book Iwould like to have been able to read then. I have incurred many debts during the course of devising and editing thisbook,not least to the contributors who have been generous and patient,and to other scholars whom,had there been space,I should like to haveincluded.I must acknowledge a particular debt to Leslie Rogers for hisencouragement and much good advice,and a particular inspiration in theconversation and example of the late Elizabeth Salter.I must also thankthe University of Sydney,which helped me find time and means to see thisproject through.The dedication of this book,however,as befits a commonendeavour,is meant to express a common debt. David Lawton 工 ## Middle English Aliterative Poetry:An IntroductionDAVID LAWTON The number of extant Middle English unrhymed alliterative poems issmall,and only two,Piers Plowman and The Siege of Jerusalem,survive inmore than two manuscripts.Yet the significance of a corpus that containstwo of the greatest Middle English poems,Piers Plowman and Sir Gawainand the Green Knight,is no smaller than the problems to which it gives rise.This volume is an attempt to consider some of these,which are to a con-siderable extent problems of context.Is it proper to talk of an 'alliterativerevival',a phrase echoing George Saintsbury's judgement that the writingof all alliterative poetry in the fourteenth century was a sort of atavisticrevival','or of an ‘alliterative surviva²by some process of continuity ofOld English metre spanning nearly three centuries?(I avoid both terms inthis essay.)What were the metrical origins,and indeed the social andcultural origins,of the alliterative forms in Middle English?On what multi-lingual literary background,of sources and other influences less direct butperhaps more important,did the fourteenth century poets draw?What wasthe nature of their audience and in what circumstances were their poemscopied?Was the writing of,and taste for,unrhymed alliterative poems inthe fourteenth century a regional or a national phenomenon?What,givenprominent shared features of alliterative style(syntactic,lexical andformulaic),constituted different poets"stylistic understanding,and whatwere the relations of one poet to another?What are the connectionsbetween unrhymed and rhymed poetic traditions,to say nothing of prose?Not least,is it critically

FAQs

What is the overall purpose of the volume?

The volume aims to bring Middle English alliterative poetry into sharper focus in its several contexts, addressing problems of context more than being purely comprehensive.

Which poems are central to the unrhymed alliterative corpus discussed here?

The discussion highlights that only two unrhymed alliterative poems survive in more than two manuscripts: Piers Plowman and The Siege of Jerusalem.

How does the introduction frame the study of unrhymed alliterative poetry?

It presents unrhymed alliterative poems as a group defined by their deliberate exclusion of rhyme and discusses how this grouping supports literary-historical comparison while avoiding treating it as absolute unity.

Sep 21, 2026

Uploaded by Asher