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The Meter of Piers Plowman

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

George R. Stewart Jr.
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Extract

Metrical interpretation of the important group of Middle English alliterative poems, of which Piers Plowman may be considered the type, has long been a subject of controversy. The present study aims, too hopefully perhaps, not at an entirely new hypothesis, but at harmonizing the two old theories in the light of recent general study of English metrics. As with so many efforts at peace-making, this may result merely in a three-cornered fight in place of a duel, so that the end may be only confusion worse confounded. We can, however, but try.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , March 1927 , pp. 113 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1927

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References

1 A good summary of various studies of the subject appears in Kaluza's Short History of English Versification, §§157-58. More recent work can be reviewed in W. E. Leonard's Scansion of Middle English Alliterative Verse (Univ. of Wisconsin Studies in Language and Literature, No. 11).

2 See G. R. Stewart, “A Method toward the Study of Dipodic Verse,” P.M.L.A., XXXIX, 979-89.

3 The dipodic theory for this type of verse is not entirely new; it has never, however, been clearly and consistently developed by its advocates. Thus Bunzen (Ein Beitrag zur Kritik der Wakefielden Mysterien, Kiel, 1903), who strikes at the root of the matter, falls into confusion because he does not realize the true nature of dipodic verse itself.

4 The metrical notation here used is that recommended by the report of the M.L.A. Committee on Metrical Notation. In the present case I have, however, not thought it necessary to try for accuracy in the time assigned to each syllable within the half-foot; I have accordingly assumed the time as 6/8, and written for two syllables, and— for three.

5 See G. R. Stewart, Modern Metrical Technique, New York, 1922, pp. 104-05.

6 The growth and strength of the four-stress theory can be attributed largely to the fact that it arose at a time when English metrical study was in a chaotic state. The reaction from a false theory of neo-classical syllabism had led us into an equally false theory of “stress verse,” and the assumption that only stress mattered. This, coupled with almost total ignorance of dipodic principles, allowed free chance for development of the four-stress theory with its loose-jointed, thoroughly unmetrical conception of verse.

7 See P.M.L.A., loc. cit.

8 The dipodic index (see P.M.L.A., loc. cit.) for the first hundred lines of Piers Plowman works out at 93, a figure so high that it would seem to preclude any possibility of the seven-stress theory.

9 See, e.g., Kaluza, op. cit., §159.