English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature)
Cambridge University Press, 10/27/2016
EAN 9781107169654, ISBN10: 1107169658
Hardcover, 254 pages, 23.5 x 16 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
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.
1. Beowulf and verse history
2. Prologues to Old English poetry
3. Lawman, the last Old English poet and the first Middle English poet
4. Prologues to Middle English alliterative poetry
5. The Erkenwald poet's sense of history
6. The alliterative tradition in the sixteenth century.