Medieval Academy of America The Unity of Middle English Alliterative Poetry Author(s): David A. Lawton Source: Speculum, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Jan., 1983), pp. 72-94 Published by: Medieval Academy of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2846614 Accessed: 25-08-2015 18:57 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2846614?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Medieval Academy of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Speculum. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SPECULUM 58,1 (1983) The Unityof Middle English AlliterativePoetry By David A. Lawton The basic unity of the Middle English alliterativeverse corpus has often been asserted. In the 1970s, GeoffreyShepherd conceded the enormous varietyof alliterativepoems in styleand outlook, but argued that"they stand in a continuum" whose terms are "moral insight and historical truth'';1 Thorlac Turville-Petreclaimed that "we are here dealing with a 'school' of poets, though one that embraces a huge varietyof styles and subjects";2 Derek Pearsall, while warning against "over-emphasis on . an alliterative 'school'," agreed that "the existence of an alliterative'school', comprisinga central 'classical' corpus of poems closely related in formal and stylistic character and with a definitelyWest Midland and North-Westernregional bias, can hardly be denied";3 and Arlyn Diamond postulated a new or redefinedgenre, the "alliterativeromance."4 Several different approaches coincide here: Shepherd's is thematic, Diamond's generic, and that of Pearsall and Turville-Petre metrical and dialectal,or regional. The verynumber of approaches raises problems: these seem heterogeneous,not always harmonious,ways of reaching agreementon a fundamentalunity. What kind of unityis meant, and what is the force of the quotation marks placed around the word "school"? (Pearsall's "classical" corpus, after all, comprises thirteen unrhymed aalax alliterative poems spread over a century;5even in the distinctivecase of translationsfrom the I GeoffreyShepherd, "The Nature of AlliterativePoetry in Late Medieval England," Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture, Proceedingsof theBritish Academy 56 (1970), 57-76; p. 72 for thisand subsequent references. 2 Thorlac Turville-Petre,The Alliterative Revival (Cambridge, Eng., 1977), p. 27. 3 Derek Pearsall, Old Englishand Middle EnglishPoetry (London, 1977), p. 150, for this and subsequent references. 4 Arlyn Diamond, "Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight: An AlliterativeRomance," Philological Quarterly55 (1976-77), 10-29. 5 The "classical" corpus is defined not by genre but by styleand approximate date. It includes works composed between the mid-fourteenthand the mid-fifteenthcenturies which are of a stylemore ornate than Piers Plowman and poems of the Piers Plowmantradition, notably Mum and theSothsegger and Piers thePloughman's Creed, in which Langland's influence on styleand subject is direct. The members of the unrhymed "classical" corpus, which I have preferred elsewhere to call the "formal" corpus ("formal" in terms of style and matter) are: the three alliterativeAlexander poems, St. Erkenwald,Sir Gawain and theGreen Knight, Cleanness, Patience, the Destructionof Troy,the Siege ofJerusalem, Morte Arthure, Winner and Waster,the Parliamentof theThree Ages, and - less formal,probably because of earlier date - Williamof Palerne. To this listJ. P. Oakden (below, n. 11) adds Josephof Arimathea and CheuelereAssigne, neither of which adheres to the aalax staple line form.The other unrhymedalliterative poems are Death and Life 72 This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry 73 Latin, AlexanderA and B, themselvesprobably unrelated, may be separated by as much as half a centuryfrom the Warsof Alexander, which is based on a differentrecension of the source.)6 In reality,there are two (admittedlyoverlapping) questions which should be kept as separate as is possible,of contentand form.Those whose concern is with the alliterativemeter in the fourteenthand fifteenthcenturies, with its numerous "modes and affiliations,"7prose as well as verse, or with the old, unresolved issue of "revival" against "continuity,"are likelyto feel that the Middle English alliterativecorpus should not be defined too strictly,and to shy away fromclaims, however qualified, for homogeneity.This tendency reached its extreme in N. F. Blake's article-lengthreview, in 1979, of Turville-Petre'sbook.8 Blake went so far as to assail the very concept of a book on the "alliterativerevival" on the grounds that no other corpus of Middle English poetryis defined for studyby its meter,and that the resultis a grave distortionin English medieval studies. Pearsall had already shown sensitivityto such a charge, having been at pains to deny any implicationthat "there is a body of poetry in Middle English which, on the basis of its metrical characteristics,can be completely isolated either socially or re- gionally or in terms of subject-matter."9Blake's challenge deserves an an- swer. I believe that there is one, although it is one that must echo Pearsall's caution against completelyisolated studyof the alliterativecorpus, especially, it seems to me, in genre. The concept of unityin Middle English alliterative verse composition is valid: in criticalterms, because of its unique temper, what Shepherd called "theme and treatmentof theme"; and in termsuseful to the literaryhistorian, because of the indebtedness of that temper in the "classical" corpus as a whole to Piers Plowman.This essay deals mainlywith content;but I should also like to suggest that the alliterativeform in the late and the CrownedKing, both directlyinspired byPiers Plowman; Scottish Field, of sixteenth-century date; and Dunbar's Tretisof theTwa MeriitWemen and theWedo, all of which are to be excluded fromthe "classical"or "formal"corpus on grounds of styleor date. 6 The Gestsof King Alexanderof Macedon, ed. F. P. Magoun (Cambridge, Mass., 1929); The Wars of Alexander,ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS ES47 (1886). See Turville-Petre,Alliterative Revival, pp. 94-104, and my article,"The Middle English AlliterativeAlexander A and C: Form and Stylein Translation from Latin Prose," Studia neophilologica53 (1981), 259-68. The authoritativetreat- ment of sources is that of Hoyt N. Duggan, "The Source of the Middle English The Wars of Alexander,"Speculum 51 (1976), 624-36. 7Elizabeth Salter, "Alliterative Modes and Affiliations in the Fourteenth Century," NeuphilologischeMitteilungen 79 (1978), 25-35; see also N. F. Blake, "RhythmicalAlliteration," ModernPhilology 67 (1969), 118-24. 8 N. F. Blake, "Middle English AlliterativeRevivals," Review 1 (1979), 205-14. 9 This is a sensible disclaimerin view of the fact that individual alliterativepoems have been examined fruitfullyto characterizethe spiritof the age in which theywere composed, notably by J. A. Burrow,Ricardian Poetry (New Haven, 1971), and Charles Muscatine,Poetry and Crisisin theAge of Chaucer(Notre Dame, 1972); nevertheless,a synopticview of a whole period runs the risk of minimizingdifferences among individual works and authors, and I argue below that alliterativepoetry is of a distinctivetemper in the contextof Middle English literature. This content downloaded from 136.167.36.226 on Tue, 25 Aug 2015 18:57:33 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 74 MiddleEnglish Alliterative Poetry fourteenthcentury owes its temporaryvogue, or revival, to the success of Langland's poem. I begin by consideringwhat is perhaps the most humble of relationsto the "classical" alliterativecorpus, Joseph of Arimathea,in order to characterizea temper which, I think,is common to most of the corpus and which findsits inspiration,I shall argue, in Piers Plovman. The two issues in Piers Plovman central to my argument are penance and the role of vernacular writingin inducing it. After a brief exploration of these themes I proceed to an examination of the more formal poetry of the "classical" corpus, where Langland's program, adapted to material more connected with serious ro- mance and so involvingthe development of topics such as the ubi suntmotif, is activelyexecuted: in Winnerand Waster,the Parliamentof theThree Ages, the MorteArthure, and Sir Gawain and the GreenKnight. My treatmentof this subject is not intended to be comprehensive, but I hope that it will be suggestive of new approaches to Middle English alliterativepoetry. The concentrationon unrhymed alliterativepoetry is a necessary limitationof space; as I shall note in a reference to the Awntyrsoff Arthure, stanzaic alliterativepoems are closelyrelated in spirit. Josephof Arimathea'I is, on the face of it, the most implausible member of the alliterativecorpus as constitutedby Oakden: the number of aalax