The Alliterative Revival: Medieval English Poetic Form
The Alliterative Revival: Poetic Movement & Legacy
1. Defining the Alliterative Revival
A poetic movement of the late 14th and 15th centuries, the Alliterative Revival includes a large number of poems written in alliterative form, often unrhymed, but sometimes using rhyme as well as alliteration. At the center of the movement is a group of poems of high literary quality.
These works encompass diverse themes:
- Historical Material:
- The Wars of Alexander (life of Alexander the Great)
- The Siege of Jerusalem (Jewish history)
- The Destruction of Troy (the Troy story)
- Morte Arthure (the last years of Arthur)
- Biblical Narratives:
- Cleanness
- Patience (based on Old Testament stories)
- Romances:
- William of Palerne
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Social, Political, and Ethical Issues:
- Winners and Waster
- Piers Plowman
What primarily defines these works as a group is their metrical practice. However, the poems also share certain characteristic attitudes of high seriousness and moral integrity.
2. Origins of Alliterative Verse
The use of alliteration as a structural principle of a verse line is an ancient Germanic form, suggesting a natural link with pre-Conquest verse. Features of vocabulary also recall the poetic diction of Anglo-Saxon poets.
However, as far as the written record goes, the classical form of Old English verse died out soon after the Norman Conquest. It was replaced by looser forms with irregular rhythmic and alliterative patterns. The most distinguished example of this is Layamon’s Brut, a long chronicle of Britain composed in the late 12th or early 13th century.
It used to be the general view that the unrhymed alliterative line survived in oral form from the Conquest to the mid-14th century. More recently, objections have been raised to this idea, in particular that the sophisticated literariness of the poems of the Revival, many of which are based on (or even closely translated from) long texts in French and Latin, can owe nothing to an oral stage of transmission.
It has instead been proposed that the written tradition was maintained by monastic authors and scribes in the West Midlands, but that all manuscripts of such earlier texts have been lost. Yet, it is difficult to understand how all trace of such poems could have vanished. An alternative hypothesis is that the movement was a new creation of 14th-century poets, developed from a variety of preexisting forms—in particular, alliterative verse in rhyming stanzas and alliterative rhyming prose.
However, the shared metrical practices of the poets are so deep-rooted, subtle, and apparently traditional that it is difficult to see how they could have been quickly assimilated and adopted.
3. Authors and Thematic Focus
Many of the authors of the Alliterative Revival were highly educated and proficient in translating Latin and French. They expected their audience to be attracted away from frivolous subjects toward a learned presentation of historical, social, and religious matters. They also relied on their audience having an appreciation of the techniques of such arts as hawking, hunting, and siege warfare.
While works of Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate are sometimes preserved in de luxe copies made for the aristocracy, manuscripts of alliterative poetry are humbler and less richly executed, suggesting ownership by a lower social class. The allusion by Chaucer’s Parson to the Revival—’I am a southren man; I kan nat geeste rum ram ruf by lettre‘—further highlights its distinct character.