Alliterative Patterning in the Morte Arthure

A cognitive approach to alliteration and conceptualization in medieval English literature

“…The poetic lines are collected into four sections (or fits, at lines 1, 491, 1126 and 1998), which collectively comprise 101 stanzas (or strophes), of various lengths (12–37 lines), each ending with a metrically different five-line ‘bob-and-wheel’ section, rhyming ababa (a single iambic foot, then four lines of iambic trimeter). Like Old English, some Middle English poetry uses alliteration, which functions to cue synthesis and meaning-making across the segmentation, and which is at times sufficiently predictable to permit emendation on the basis of patterning (see Jefferson & Putter 2005; Solopova 2009). As Duggan (1997: 229) notes, there is a ‘tendency towards phrasal aggregation as the principle of syntactic development in alliterative poetry’.…”