Abstract
The compound word grass-bed occurs four times in Old and Middle English texts. In each case, grass-bed occurs in an alliterative poem; in each case, the word is used as a kenning for a site of bodily death (a battlefield or a grave). The chronologically and metrically uneven distribution of poetic words like grass-bed in the corpus of medieval English texts raises questions about the reliability of the extant written record, the historical resources of individual writers, and the cultural meanings of poetic traditions. Meanwhile, research in alliterative metrics has begun to suggest that the division of medieval English literary history into Old and Middle subperiods masks fundamental continuities between pre- and post-Conquest alliterative verse. Progress in alliterative metrics refocuses the historical problems attendant upon rare poetic words like grass-bed. Conversely, against the backdrop of technical argumentation in the field of metrics, the study of words offers a second way of understanding the continuity of the alliterative tradition. This article explores connections between metrical history and lexical history via a case study of one especially long-lived and metrically marked poetic word.
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© 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Grass-Bed: A Poetic Compound in the Alliterative Tradition
- Middle English Counter-Rivere
- Dialect Boundaries and Dialect Translation: The Case of Middle Scots and Middle English
- Between Homonymy and Polysemy: The Origins and Career of the English Form Dialect in the Sixteenth Century
- ‘Übersetzen’ als Kulturprozess: Thesen zur Dynamis gemachter Welten
- Not for an Age? Robert Lowell’s Historical Moment
- Reviews
- Conor O’Brien. Bede’s Temple: An Image and its Interpretation. Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 242 pp., 3 figures, £ 60.00.
- Daphné Kerremans. A Web of New Words: A Corpus-Based Study of the Conventionalization Process of English Neologisms. English Corpus Linguistics 15. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2015, 278 pp., 21 tables, 50 figures, € 56.00/£ 45.00/$ 72.95.
- Jack Grieve. Regional Variation in Written American English. Studies in English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, xviii + 335 pp., 81 figures, 35 tables, £ 69.99.
- Hans-Peter Wagner. An Introduction to British and Irish Fiction: Renaissance to Romanticism. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014, 262 pp., 60 illustr., € 29.50.
- Birgit Neumann (ed.). Präsenz und Evidenz fremder Dinge im Europa des 18. Jahrhunderts. Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert – Supplementa 19. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015, 576 pp., 57 illustr., € 49.00.
- Burkhard Niederhoff. Die englische Komödie: Eine Einführung. Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik 40. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2014, 234 pp., € 19.95.
- Stefan Horlacher, Bettina Jansen and Wieland Schwanebeck (eds.). Männlichkeit: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016, vi + 382 pp., € 69.95.
- Stephan Buhr. “Infinite Possibilities”: Die Zweite Generation der Transzendentalisten und die Idee einer “Universal Religion”. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015, 234 pp., € 28.50.
- Philipp Löffler. Pluralist Desires: Contemporary Historical Fiction and the End of the Cold War. New York: Camden House, 2015, 182 pp., £55.00.
- Peter Freese (ed.). The ‘Journey of Life’ in American Life and Literature. American Studies – A Monograph Series 260. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015, 259 pp., € 32.00.
- Johanna Hartmann and Hubert Zapf (eds.). Censorship and Exile. Internationale Schriften des Jakob-Fugger-Zentrums 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, 285 pp., 11 illustr., € 45.00.
- Books Received
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- Grass-Bed: A Poetic Compound in the Alliterative Tradition
- Middle English Counter-Rivere
- Dialect Boundaries and Dialect Translation: The Case of Middle Scots and Middle English
- Between Homonymy and Polysemy: The Origins and Career of the English Form Dialect in the Sixteenth Century
- ‘Übersetzen’ als Kulturprozess: Thesen zur Dynamis gemachter Welten
- Not for an Age? Robert Lowell’s Historical Moment
- Reviews
- Conor O’Brien. Bede’s Temple: An Image and its Interpretation. Oxford Theology and Religion Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015, 242 pp., 3 figures, £ 60.00.
- Daphné Kerremans. A Web of New Words: A Corpus-Based Study of the Conventionalization Process of English Neologisms. English Corpus Linguistics 15. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2015, 278 pp., 21 tables, 50 figures, € 56.00/£ 45.00/$ 72.95.
- Jack Grieve. Regional Variation in Written American English. Studies in English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016, xviii + 335 pp., 81 figures, 35 tables, £ 69.99.
- Hans-Peter Wagner. An Introduction to British and Irish Fiction: Renaissance to Romanticism. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014, 262 pp., 60 illustr., € 29.50.
- Birgit Neumann (ed.). Präsenz und Evidenz fremder Dinge im Europa des 18. Jahrhunderts. Das achtzehnte Jahrhundert – Supplementa 19. Göttingen: Wallstein, 2015, 576 pp., 57 illustr., € 49.00.
- Burkhard Niederhoff. Die englische Komödie: Eine Einführung. Grundlagen der Anglistik und Amerikanistik 40. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 2014, 234 pp., € 19.95.
- Stefan Horlacher, Bettina Jansen and Wieland Schwanebeck (eds.). Männlichkeit: Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch. Stuttgart: Metzler, 2016, vi + 382 pp., € 69.95.
- Stephan Buhr. “Infinite Possibilities”: Die Zweite Generation der Transzendentalisten und die Idee einer “Universal Religion”. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2015, 234 pp., € 28.50.
- Philipp Löffler. Pluralist Desires: Contemporary Historical Fiction and the End of the Cold War. New York: Camden House, 2015, 182 pp., £55.00.
- Peter Freese (ed.). The ‘Journey of Life’ in American Life and Literature. American Studies – A Monograph Series 260. Heidelberg: Winter, 2015, 259 pp., € 32.00.
- Johanna Hartmann and Hubert Zapf (eds.). Censorship and Exile. Internationale Schriften des Jakob-Fugger-Zentrums 1. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2015, 285 pp., 11 illustr., € 45.00.
- Books Received