The Lost Tradition Essays on Middle English Alliterative Poetry

Four stresses, a line broken in two by a caesura, and a pattern of alliteration linking the two half-lines were features of the staple manner of Anglo-Saxon verse. And this tradition of writing continued into post-Conquest England, sometimes providing a distinctive alternative to rhymed or stanzaic verse, sometimes coexisting with it, occasionally a little uneasily. But trusteth wel, I am a Southren man; I kan nat geeste 'rum, ram, ruf', by lettre ... says Chaucers Parson, parodying the manner of alliterativ

John Scattergood has been Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Trinity College Dublin since 1980