Middle English Alliterative Poetry

Middle English Alliterative Poetry

The Middle English Alliterative Poetry

Answer: The Middle English romance which shows an intense literary activity, reaches the apogee of perfection in the great narrative poetry of Chaucer. The new ferment at work is indicated perhaps nowhere more plainly than in the emergence of the old English alliterative poems, roughly between the years 1350 and 1400. These poems, ranging from a few 100 lines to several thousands, are written in a meter which can be traced to the old four-beat alliterative measures of Beowulf. Barring Piers Plowman most of these poems like Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight belong to the Northwest Midland and all of them have been collected and published in one quarto volume by Sir Robert Cotton, a famous antiquarian.

Pearl is an allegorical poem written in a 100 stanzas of 12 lines. In a garden the poet has lost his pearl, his daughter Margaret. The bereaved father frequents her grave and one day while doing so falls asleep. In his dream he meets Margaret who tells him about the joy of heavenly life and how to be worthy of it. As he struggles to cross the stream to join her, the dream vanishes and he wakes to find his eyes wet. Pearl is the saddest of all early English poems. The metrical text convinces us that it might have been written by the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Purity is also concerned with the biblico-ethical questions. It shows how impossible it is for one who is unclean to stand God’s pure presence. Though the story is satisfactorily told, it lacks a proper artistic motivation. This is also true to the companion piece Patient. It stresses the efficacy of fortitude. The soul must pass through ordeals but the trials must be borne with patience, ‘a noble point though it displaces off’.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is the finest Arthurian romance in English. The main adventure is Gawain’s acceptance of the challenge of an exchange of blows with the Green Knight in which he beheads Bercilak. On the next Christmas Eve, Gawain at the green Chapel is tempted on three successive mornings by his host’s wife. Gawain toils her attempts but foolishly conceals the magic girdle gifted by her and for this mistake suffers a wound. The poem shows the poet’s comment over diction and dexterous control of the parallel threads of the narrative.

The verse of Langland’s Piers the Plowman, the most popular poem of the 14^th century is purely alliterative. It is uncontaminated by French versification. But the general visionary from the poem is borrowed from the continent. The poem was published in three successive versions - A (1362), B (1377) C (1395 to 98). The A Text is the most dependable and the additions contained in the B & C Texts, though characterised by sincerity and power of impression, are “too incoherence to be easily summarised”. The structure of the poem is confusing though modern critics try to simplify the complexity by dividing the poems into two parts visio and vita. The strength of the poem is in its ‘sublimely imaginative poetry’.

Associated with these is Pistyl of Susan, an alliterate poem in 28 tail- rhyme stanzas. It relates the history of Susannah and Daniel. Finally these poems of the 14^th century alliterative revival are not merely pieces of rare virtuosity; they are, in essence, the most significant vernacular expression of English social thoughts in the Middle Ages.

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👉 Middle English Allegorical Poetry

👉 Anglo Saxon Lyric Poetry

👉 Anglo Saxon Christian Poetry