Read Online The Columbia History of British Poetry by Carl Woodring, James Shapiro - Free Book Online
Authors: Carl Woodring, James Shapiro
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resembled existing compositions. The stress on vocabulary is important: the Latin learned views of poetry emphasized fictional content and metrics, but words and language were usually ignored. Practical handbooks (commentaries on classical poets, rhetorical textbooks) might approach vocabulary through the explanation of figures of speech, but this seems very different from the attitude of poets of the alliterative tradition. Such poets seem to have an unselfconscious veneration for something like the Old English poet's "wordhoard": a precise, detailed, technical control of a huge variety of words, synonyms, set phrases, archaic and poetic terms drawn in large part from non-Latinate vocabulary and secular culture. They transposed a variety of medieval works into the alliterative style: the Earl of Hereford had the absurd romance William of Palerne translated from French into English (before 1361) for the benefit of his household; there are other romances, plays, some delightful lyrics, quasi-historical works, stories from the Arthurian cycle (the stirring Morte Arthure ), biblical legends and many religious works. Exceedingly intricate blends of alliteration and rhyme occur: the poems "Pater noster" and ''De tribus regibus mortuis" printed with the works of John Audelay are particularly notable.
Among the best of alliterative poems are the three debate poems, Winner and Waster, The Parliament of the Three Ages, and Death and Life . They have barely survived in battered late manuscripts, and it is always assumed they belong to the same period, the mid-fourteenth century, though the evidence is slim. They are all dream visions. Each narrator
Page 35
goes out into a spring landscape, falls asleep, and witnesses a conflict or argument: in one case between the two economic principles of saving and spending; in the next, between the three ages of man, youth, maturity, and old age; and in the last, between Lady Life and Dame Death. The poet of Winner and Waster deploys his skills in virtuoso descriptions of birdsong, the heraldic accoutrements of his combatants, and the luxuries enjoyed by the profligate wasters:
nysottes of the new gett so nysely attyred
With syde slabbande sleves sleght to the grounde. . . .
(410411)
He has a keen satiric wit and characterizes his opposed principles very neatly (Waster says to Winner, "Thou schal birdes upbrayd of thaire bright wedis"); the poet presents an interesting (and still topical) argument on the interdependence of spending and saving; but he is less interested in sustained allegory, and the frame story of his debate does not really make sense (it does not help that the last few lines of the poem are lost). The satirist's discontent is apparent in the short prologue, where the poet makes the familiar complaint that the times are evil, lords no longer like to hear "makirs of myrthes that matirs couthe fynde" (line 20) but listen only to young fools ("a childe apon chere withowtten chyn-wedys") who repeat silly jokes. The true "maker of myrthes" composes his own ''wyse wordes," and in the end the worth of the truly valuable poet will be apparent.
The resources of the alliterative style for creating an intricate and convincing surface are beautifully deployed in The Parliament of the Three Ages . The precision and detail of the description of the pleasures of life in Maytime, the narrator's successful hunt with all its proper terminology, the beauty and gusto of Youth, the parade of human glory and achievement described by Elde are all brought into sharp relief by the equally powerful awareness of
Among the best of alliterative poems are the three debate poems, Winner and Waster, The Parliament of the Three Ages, and Death and Life . They have barely survived in battered late manuscripts, and it is always assumed they belong to the same period, the mid-fourteenth century, though the evidence is slim. They are all dream visions. Each narrator
Page 35
goes out into a spring landscape, falls asleep, and witnesses a conflict or argument: in one case between the two economic principles of saving and spending; in the next, between the three ages of man, youth, maturity, and old age; and in the last, between Lady Life and Dame Death. The poet of Winner and Waster deploys his skills in virtuoso descriptions of birdsong, the heraldic accoutrements of his combatants, and the luxuries enjoyed by the profligate wasters:
nysottes of the new gett so nysely attyred
With syde slabbande sleves sleght to the grounde. . . .
(410411)
He has a keen satiric wit and characterizes his opposed principles very neatly (Waster says to Winner, "Thou schal birdes upbrayd of thaire bright wedis"); the poet presents an interesting (and still topical) argument on the interdependence of spending and saving; but he is less interested in sustained allegory, and the frame story of his debate does not really make sense (it does not help that the last few lines of the poem are lost). The satirist's discontent is apparent in the short prologue, where the poet makes the familiar complaint that the times are evil, lords no longer like to hear "makirs of myrthes that matirs couthe fynde" (line 20) but listen only to young fools ("a childe apon chere withowtten chyn-wedys") who repeat silly jokes. The true "maker of myrthes" composes his own ''wyse wordes," and in the end the worth of the truly valuable poet will be apparent.
The resources of the alliterative style for creating an intricate and convincing surface are beautifully deployed in The Parliament of the Three Ages . The precision and detail of the description of the pleasures of life in Maytime, the narrator's successful hunt with all its proper terminology, the beauty and gusto of Youth, the parade of human glory and achievement described by Elde are all brought into sharp relief by the equally powerful awareness of
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