'The Tale of the Tribe'

‘The Tale of the Tribe’: The Twentieth-Century Alliterative Revival Rahul Gupta PhD University of York English September 2014 2 Abstract This thesis studies the revival of Old English- and Norse-inspired alliterative versification in twentieth-century English poetry and poetics. It is organised as a chronological sequence of three case-studies: three authors, heirs to Romantic Nationalism, writing at twentieth-century intersections between Modernism, Postmodernism, and Medievalism. It indicates why this form attracted revival; which medieval models were emulated, with what success, in which modern works: the technique and mystique of alliterative verse as a modern mode. It differs from previous scholarship by advocating Kipling and Tolkien, by foregrounding the primacy of language, historical linguistics, especially the philological reconstruction of Germanic metre; and by, accordingly, methodological emphasis on formal scansion, taking account of audio recordings of Pound and Tolkien performing their poetry. It proposes the revived form as archaising, epic, mythopoeic, constructed by its exponents as an authentic poetic speech symbolising an archetypical Englishness— ‘The Tale of the Tribe’. A trope emerges of revival of the culturally-‘buried’ native and innate, an ancestral lexico-metrical heritage conjured back to life. A substantial Introduction offers a primer of Old English metre and style: how it works, and what it means, according to Eduard Sievers’ (1850-1932) reconstruction. Chapter I promotes Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) as pioneering alliterative poet, his engagement with Old-Northernism, runes, and retelling of the myth of Weland. Chapter II assesses the impact of Anglo-Saxon on and through Ezra Pound (1885- 1972). Scansions of his ‘Seafarer’ and Cantos testify to the influence of Saxonising versification in the development of Pound’s Modernist language and free verse. Chapter III exhibits the alliterative oeuvre of J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973), featuring close readings of verse from Lord of the Rings. The Conclusion contends that twentieth-century English poetry should be recognised as evincing an ambitious alliterative revival, impossible before, and that this ancient metre is likely to endure into the future. 3 Contents Page Abstract……………………………………………………………………….2 Contents………………………………………………………………………3 Author’s Declaration…………………………………………………………5 Introduction: The Ancient Technique and Modern Mystique of Alliterative Metre……….………........…………………………,……………...6 Topic and Structure…………………………….……….……….........6 Chronology and Context….…………………………….…………….6 Methodology………………………………………….…………..…10 Ancient Technique…………………………………………………..18 § I. Syllabification….…………………....…….…………….20 § II. Accentuation…………………………….....…………...20 i.‘Swellverses’: Hypermetrics…….………..………..22 ii.‘Heavings and Sinkings’……...………….………..22 § III. Quantity……………………….….……………………24 i. Resolution………………………..………………..24 § IV. Metre………………………………….………………25 § V. Anacrusis………………………………..……………..34 § VI. ‘Alliteration’…………………………..………………35 i.Consonantal…………………………..…………...37 ii. Vocalic……………………………….….……….37 iii. The Headstave….……………………..………...38 § VII. Verse-Style…………...……………………..…..…...41 i. Caesura and Hemistich to Full-line…,……...…….41 ii. Half-line to Paragraph………………….…...……42 iii. Diction and Rhetoric to Episode and Narrative....44 Modern Mystique: The Tale of the Tribe………………...………….46 Chapter I. The Runes on the Sword: Kipling and the Work of Wayland.........................................……………........58 Onband beadurūne… .…………………………..…………….…….………58 Kipling’s Victorian Old-Northern Context: Morris and Haggard.….….…...63 Identifying Kipling’s Old-Northern Corpus……………….……….….…….66 ‘The Tale of the Tribe’…….…………………………………….….……….68 Smith and Scop………………………………………………….….………..73 Rudyard Runemaster………………………………………….….………….81 “Runes”: ‘The Magic of the Necessary Word’……….……………..………89 Syllabification……………………………………………….………90 Accentuation………………………………………………….……..91 Alliteration…..……………………….……………………….……..91 Caesuration………………………………………………….………93 Runes in “Runes”?..............................................................................98 4 Chapter II. Breaking the Pentameter: Ezra Pound and ‘the English National Chemical’..………....……………..108 Gathering the Limbs………………......…………………,………………...108 ‘The Sound of Pound’: Note on Aural-Oral Resources.......……….………127 ‘The First Heave’: Scanning ‘The Seafarer’...….……....………..….……..130 Alliteration……………………………………………………...…….……130 Caesura and Hemistich………………………………..….………………...131 Metre…………………………………...……...…...………………………140 Type A Verses………………….…..……………….………………141 Type B Verses………………….………..…………….……………144 Type C Verses……………………..…………..…………………...146 Type D Verses……………………...………………..……………..150 Type E Verses……………………..……………………...………...150 Hypermetric Verses…………………..……………………..……..151 Ear, Ear || for the ӯða gewealc: Scanning Cantos I, II, XIII, XIV, XV….....159 Chapter III. ‘Reviv[ing] Vanished Voices’: Tolkien as ‘Bard to Anglo-Saxon’…………......………………….……….…184 The Language of the Dead: Dark Staves…….………....………………….184 Living Lore: Talking Trees…………………..…..….……….…………….207 ‘So the Songs Tell Us…’……………………....…...……….…………….. 242 Conclusion: ‘From the Grey Twilight’………….....……………………...…259 Bibliography of Works Cited………….......……………………….………….267 Primary Sources…………………....………………......…………………..267 Secondary Sources……….......……...……………………………………..274 5 Author’s Declaration I, the author, hereby declare that this thesis is my own work, researched and written solely by myself without the involvement of any collaborator; that no part of it has been submitted previously for examination at the University of York, or elsewhere at any other institution for another award; that, further, this thesis includes neither previously published work, nor work currently under consideration for publication. 6 Introduction: The Ancient Technique and Modern Mystique of Alliterative Metre. The aesthetics of alliterative poetry have received surprisingly little comment […]1 Topic and Structure The subject of this thesis is the revival of ‘alliterative’ metre in the twentieth century: the recreation and renewal of the accentual-alliterative form of versification, and its concomitant lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical poetic style, as inspired by Old English and to a lesser extent (the related but differing) Middle English and Old Norse poetry, in modern Anglophone poetics and poetic practice. The thesis is structured as a chronological succession of three case-studies of three main authors, three chapters in (overlapping) biographical sequence: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), Ezra Pound (1885-1972) and J. R. R. Tolkien (1892-1973); reference is also made particularly to such contemporaries of the three authors as T. S. Eliot (1888- 1965), C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), W. H. Auden (1907-1973). Chronology and Context Chronologically, in terms of the stylistically relevant corpus in question, the period compassed is roughly the first half of the century, c.1900-c.1950; though it should be noted that this climacteric engenders sequels in the work of later twentieth- and twenty-first century poets such as Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) and, into the present century, Simon Armitage (1963- ). I shall indicate that a modern revival of alliterative metre in a full sense could not have occurred before this period: the twentieth-century alliterative revival happened in due season. It must further be recognised that the revival depends upon, develops and begins to fulfil, an earlier movement, immediately in the nineteenth century, of German Romanticism and English Medievalism.2 1 Tom Shippey, “Tolkien’s Development as a Writer of Alliterative Poetry in Modern English,” in Tolkien’s Poetry, ed. Julian Eilmann and Allan Turner (Zurich and Jena: Walking Tree Publishers, 2013), 13. 2 T. A. Shippey, The Road to Middle-earth (London: HarperCollins, 1992), 5-50, 296 passim; Shippey and Richard Utz, eds., Medievalism in the Modern World: Essays in Honour of Leslie Workman (Brepols: Turnhout, 1998); Shippey and Martin Arnold, eds., Correspondences: Medievalism in Scholarship and the Arts (Woodbridge: Boydell, and Brewer, 2005); Andrew Wawn, ed., Constructing Nations, Reconstructing Myth: Essays in Honour of T. A. Shippey 7 This context should include awareness of such major antecedents as William Morris (1834-1896), explicitly acknowledged by this study’s three main poets, and Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Morris’ advocacy, in terms of matter, of Beowulf and the Norse sagas, and mythopoeic narrative in poetry generally; and, stylistically, his effort to forge a linguistic style suited to these, related to the Saxonising linguistic purism, or ‘Anglish’—of which William Barnes, G. M. Hopkins, C. M. Doughty, and to an extent Tennyson and Hardy were also notable contemporary exponents—was of prime importance in England.3 Though unacknowledged, and ignored in previous scholarship on the revival, Wagner could be shown to have anticipated theoretically the principal ideas of a modern alliterative revival, and to have manifested them practice in the most conspicuous and influential medievalist cultural monument of the nineteenth century, if not of modern times, Der Ring des Nibelungen.4 His manifestoes of the 1850s articulate a comprehensive and, on its own terms, coherent and consistent, theory expounding, and justifying, a revival of a—philologically reconstructed—ancient Germanic alliterative verse and style, as a modern medium.5 Wagner’s construction of (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007); Karl Fugelso, ed., “Defining Medievalism(s),”

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