 | Alliterative verse: Encyclopedia II - Alliterative verse - Old English poetic forms
Alliterative verse - Old English poetic forms
Old English poetry appears to be based upon one system of verse construction, a system which remained remarkably consistent for centuries, although some patterns of classical Old English verse begin to break down at the end of the Old English period.
The most widely used system of classification is based on that developed by Eduard Sievers. It should be emphasized that Sievers' system is fundamentally a method of categorization rather than an full theory of meter. It does not, in other words, purport to describe the system the scops actually used to compose their verse, nor does it explain why certain patterns are favored or avoided. Sievers divided verses into five basic types, labeled A-E. The system is founded upon accent, alliteration, the quantity of vowels, and patterns of syllabic accentuation.
Alliterative verse - Accent
A line of poetry in Old English consists of two half-lines or verses, distichs, with a pause or caesura in the middle of the line. Each half-line has two accented syllables. The following example from The Battle of Maldon, spoken by the warrior Byrthnoth, shows this:
Hige sceal þe heardra, || heorte þe cenre,
mod sceal þe mare, || þe ure mægen lytlað
("Courage must be the greater, heart the bolder, spirit the greater, the more our strength is diminished.")
Alliterative verse - Alliteration
Alliteration is the principal binding agent of Old English poetry. Two syllables alliterate when they begin with the same sound; all vowels alliterate together, but the consonant clusters st-, sp- and sc- are treated as separate sounds (so st- does not alliterate with s- or sp-). On the other hand, in Old English unpalatized c (pronounced /k/) alliterated with palatized c (pronounced /ch/), and unpalatized g (pronounced /g/) likewise alliterated with palatized g (pronounced /y/). (This is because the poetic form was inherited from a time when these letters always sounded the same.)
The first stressed syllable of the off-verse, or second half-line, usually alliterates with one or both of the stressed syllables of the on-verse, or first half-line. The second stressed syllable of the off-verse does not usually alliterate with the others.
Alliterative verse - Survivals
Just as rhyme was seen in some Anglo-Saxon poems (e.g. The Rhyming Poem, and, to some degree, The Proverbs of Alfred), the use of alliterative verse continued into Middle English. Layamon's Brut, written in about 1215, uses a loose alliterative scheme. The Pearl Poet uses one of the most sophisticated alliterative schemes extant in Pearl, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Even later, William Langland's Piers Plowman is a major work in English that is written in alliterative verse; it was written between 1360 and 1399. Though a thousand years have passed between this work and the Golden Horn of Gallehus, the poetic form remains much the same:
A feir feld full of folk || fond I þer bitwene,
Of alle maner of men, || þe mene and þe riche,
Worchinge and wandringe || as þe world askeþ.
(Among them I found a fair field full of people, all manner of men, the poor and the rich, working and wandering as the world requires.)
Alliteration was often used together with rhyme in Middle English work, as in Pearl. In general, Middle English poets were somewhat loose about the number of stresses; in Sir Gawain, for instance, there are many lines with additional alliterating stresses (e.g. l.2, "the borgh brittened and brent to brondez and askez"), and the medial pause is not always strictly maintained.
After Chaucer, alliterative verse became fairly uncommon, although some alliterative poems, such as Pierce the Ploughman's Crede (ca. 1400) and William Dunbar's superb Tretis of the Tua Marriit Women and the Wedo (ca. 1500) were written in the form in the 15th century. However, by 1600, the four-beat alliterative line had completely vanished, at least from the written tradition.
Alliterative verse is occasionally written by modern authors. J. R. R. Tolkien composed several poems about Middle-earth in Old English alliterative verse; these poems were found among his papers and published posthumously. W. H. Auden also wrote a number of his poems, including The Age of Anxiety , in alliterative verse, modified only slightly to fit the phonetic patterns of modern English. The noun-laden style of the headlines makes the style of alliterative verse particularly apt for Auden's poem:
Now the news. Night raids on
Five cities. Fires started.
Pressure applied by pincer movement
In threatening thrust. Third Division
Enlarges beachhead. Lucky charm
Saves sniper. Sabotage hinted
In steel-mill stoppage. . . .
Other poets who have experimented with modern alliterative English verse include Ezra Pound, and Richard Wilbur, whose Junk opens with the lines:
An axe angles
from my neighbor's ashcan;
It is hell's handiwork,
the wood not hickory.
The flow of the grain
not faithfully followed.
The shivered shaft
rises from a shellheap
Of plastic playthings,
paper plates.
Other related archivesAngantyr, Battle of Stamford Bridge, Bavarian, Beowulf, Chaucer, Christian, Cleanness, Denmark, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Eddas, Eduard Sievers, English, Estonian, Ezra Pound, Fagrskinna, Finnish, Freyr, Germanic languages, Golden horns of Gallehus, Harald III of Norway, Hebrides, Heliand, Hervor, Hildebrandslied, Háttatal, Hávamál, Iceland, J. R. R. Tolkien, Kalevala, Kalevipoeg, Layamon, List of Norse gods, List of Norse mythological people, items and places, Medieval literature, Middle English, Middle-earth, Norse Sagas, Norse mythological influences on later literature, Norse mythology, Numbers in Norse mythology, Old English, Old English poetry, Old High German, Old Norse, Old Norse orthography, Old Norse poetry, Old Saxon, Pearl, Pearl Poet, Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, Piers Plowman, Poetic Edda, Poetic form, Prose Edda, Proto-Norse, Richard Wagner, Richard Wilbur, Rune stones, Runic, Rök Stone, Sievers' system, Sievers, Eduard, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Skírnismál, Snorri Sturluson, Svafrlami, Temple at Uppsala, The Age of Anxiety, The Battle of Maldon, The Nine Worlds of Norse Mythology, The Proverbs of Alfred, The Rhyming Poem, Tollund Man, Turkic, Uyghur, W. H. Auden, Waking of Angantyr, William Dunbar, William Langland, alliterate, alliteration, articles, assonance, ballad, biographies, cæsura, enjambement, epic, fourth century, grammatical, kennings, lordly, metaphors, particles, prosodic, prosody, rhyme, runestones, sagas, skald, skaldic, stanzaic, stanzas, syllables, syntax, trochee, valkyrja, verse
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