Product Description: Prior to the publication of this volume in 1987, scholars interested in Old English alliterative meter discovered a number of intriguing restrictions on verse form, and their discoveries proved useful in the editing of texts and in research on the early history of the English language...read more

This is a clear and accessible account of early Germanic alliterative verse that explains how such verse was treated by the Beowulf poet. There are differences of poetic style between Beowulf and the otherwise similar verse of ancient Scandinavia and continental Europe. Such distinctions have intrigued scholars for over a century, but Russom is the first to provide a systematic explanation of Old English, Old Norse, Old Saxon and Old High German alliterative meters. Russom's results should interest scholars of Old English and related Germanic languages, as well as linguists and those concerned with poetic meter.

Product Description: The essays of this volume employ diverse strategies for conceptualizing the history of English as at once chaotic and yet amenable to circumscribed analyses that incorporate a broad view of language change. Several of the world's leading scholars of the English language contribute to the overall perspective that an elaboration of linguistic, cultural, and social contexts and a renewed emphasis on the concrete historical conditions of language change are necessary to approach some long-standing obstacles in the study of the history of the English language...read more