The Shape of the B-Verse in Middle English Alliterative Poetry

Abstract

We have been studying Middle English alliterative verse for over a century, but so far we lack an authoritative description of the rhythmic constraints that governed the poets who wrote alliterative verse. Though some scholars have tried to show the survival of Sievers's five types, few editors have dared, in the absence of a comprehensive and authoritative account of the meter, to emend or choose between the variants in the manuscripts on metrical grounds.' Two factors largely account for this state of affairs: the apparent variety of the verse form itself and the failure of students of the meter to distinguish the practices of poets from those of the scribes. The variety of rhythmic patterns occurring in the surviving manuscripts is formidable. Unlike foot-counted measures, Middle English alliterative meter appears to permit literally hundreds of combinations of stressed and un-