Abstract
Abstract This chapter introduces alliterative verse, which coexisted alongside alternating metres as another family of metrical approaches. Half-lines, lifts, and dips long and short are defined and illustrated, and the chapter briefly models the use of metrically informed close reading using a passage from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Then the chapter describes how alliteration itself fits into alliterative verse and pauses to consider how poets used alliteration in alternating metres too. The special alliterative lexis common in Middle English alliterative verse is identified. A section explores early Middle English alliterative verse, especially Layamon’s Brut, and the final section discusses alliterative-stanzaic poems.
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