| Following the Norman Conquest in 1066, alliterative/accentual verse became less frequent. The new accentual/syllabic tradition rose to prominence in the 12{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}{dollar} century and, except for occasional appearances by other meters, remained dominant until the 19{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}.{dollar} Poets of the 19{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}{dollar} and 20{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}{dollar} centuries have revived, both consciously and unconsciously, the alliterative/accentual versification of Old and Middle English poetry. This "recovery" is prosodic and political, participating in and reflecting upon both the metrical revolutions beginning in the 19{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}{dollar} century and the cultural, social and economic changes of the recent past. Although the form has become associated with the "unorthodox" or alternative traditions of western thought and is often used as a meter with which to defy the epistemes associated with the accentual/syllabic tradition, alliterative meters also encode a radical ethnic, national and prosodic conservatism. The roundabout way in which this older tradition was received by poets like Coleridge and Hopkins seemed to lend credence to the theory that accentual meters were the native and natural verse rhythm of English speech and poetry, and this reception justified the nationalism with which nineteenth century philologists went about constructing a model of English language origins. 19{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}{dollar} and 20{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}{dollar} century poets examined in this study have used the meter for various purposes. By reading closely the rhythms of Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. H. Auden. Ted Hughes, Richard Wilbur, Geoffrey Hill, Tony Harrison and Robert Penn Warren, we see general patterns emerge. These patterns respond to and critique the received versions of Old and Middle English history and prosody. We find also a general agreement of technique among British poets, in whose work the alliterative tradition cannot be divorced from its historicity. American poets Wilbur and Warren are disengaged from such historical contingencies and employ the rhythm to reflect neo-Romantic theories of poetic composition. Through Warren, we see that the recovery of alliterative verse has participated in the free verse revolution of the 20{dollar}sp{lcub}rm th{rcub}{dollar} century, and the cadences which characterize much contemporary free verse may well be alliterative/accentual in origin. |
