Early English Metre

Description

Thomas A. Bredehoft's "Early English Metre" is a reassessment of the metrical rules for English poetry from "Beowulf" to Layamon. Bredehoft offers a new account of many of the most puzzling features of Old English poetry – anacrusis, alliteration patterns, rhyme, and hypermetric verses – and further offers a clear account of late Old English verse as it descended from the classical verse as observed in "Beowulf". He makes the surprising and controversial discovery that Ælfric’s alliterative works are formally indistinguishable from late verse. Discussing the early Middle English verse-forms of Layamon's "Brut", Bredehoft not only demonstrates that they can be understood as developing from late Old English, but that Layamon seems to have known, and quoted from, the poems of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle". "Early English Metre" presents a new perspective on early English verse and a new perspective on much of early English literary history. It is an essential addition to the literature on Old and Middle English and will be widely discussed amongst scholars in the field. Acknowledgments vii 1.1 Introduction 3 1.2 Sieversian Formalism 13 2.1 A New Formalism for Classical Old English Metre 21 2.2 Scanning Old English Verse 35 2.3 Additional Rules: Hypermetric Verses, Rhyme, and Alliteration 51 2.4 Classical Old English Poetics 63 3.1 Late Old English Verse 70 3.2 Ælfric and Late Old English Verse 81 3.3 The Poetics of Late Old English Verse 91 4.1 Layamon and Early Middle English Verse 99 4.2 Layamon’s Old English Poetics 110 Notes 121 Bibliography 173 Index 179