2 Old and Middle English poetry

Poetry is conventionally considered to be fundamentally different from prose – metrically, syntactically, referentially and even lexically, and therefore, narratologically. Form has a significant impact on meaning. Of course, not all poetry uses the same techniques in the same way, but there is a pool of resources fundamentally absent from those available to the prose writer or dramatist that can be reconfigured along with shared resources in ways uniquely appropriate to verse. The metrical features of older poetry – from classical, Germanic and Asian traditions, among others – including properties arising from oral-formulaic traditions (where prefabricated and metrically orthodox collocations are reused in a very specific form of the ready-made formula) permit enhanced memorability and aesthetic enjoyment, as well as fashioning interconnectivity across longer, narrative texts.

In turn, the interpreter of poetry, whether aural or scribal, recruits different interpretive and synthesizing capacities during sense making, with the result that the processing of poetic schemas and constructions must be distinctive – less strictly linear, more acoustically driven, and reliant on the comprehension of more complex patterning. Moreover, there is wide critical acknowledgement that gaps among meaning units can be larger in poetic texts; form cannot properly be separated from content; ‘poetic licence’ – an expectation of or tolerance for the flouting of grammatical and semantic rules – is contextually constructed and embedded in the interpretive contract; and the brain responds to the overlapping and interaction of the connections created by rhythm, rhyme, assonance, alliteration and other forms of sound patterning, in conjunction with semantic elements in poetry, in ways that must differ from the cognitive processing of prose (see Tsur Reference Tsur1996: 59). In turn, modifications to conventionalized constructions and chunking must arise from the expectations and realities of the poetic context.

One of the most pervasive distinctions of poetry is acoustic patterning, which can be seen to be systematic, and can create syntactic relationships at a subconscious level. Moreover, by its very pervasive existence, the systematic use of sound in poetry both acknowledges verse-meaning fragmentation, and also plays a key role in triggering how those parts can be synthesized into conceptual clusters, and in turn into a textual whole during syntactic processing. This structuring systematicity becomes predictive during the process of audience recognition, and directs attention to the continuation of the pattern. Poetry has a forward dynamic sustained by this repetition or structure: ‘verse induces us to lean forward in completion of the pattern, or its repetition’ (McHale Reference McHale2014: 285). The brain is primed by a perceived pattern to complete the sequence. Beyond the metrical and line-level elements, beginning rhyme – alliteration – along with the interplay among sounds, and between acoustic and content-level information, can certainly be seen to contribute to this leaning forward, even if we look back to the earliest long poetic narratives written in English for evidence of that prospective inclination.

Medieval English poetic texts habitually use alliteration as a major structuring and organizing principle, usually on nouns and adjectives, a by-product of the fundamentally ‘nominalizing’ older forms of English, where complex or blended ideas were expressed via compound nouns or adjectives, the parts of speech that regularly take primary stress in verse (see Cable Reference Cable1991). Further factors having an impact on this system include the propensity in Germanic languages, such as Old English, to place stress on the word's root syllable, the flexible syntax available in this inflected language, and the conventionalized system of avoiding alliterating the final stressed syllable in a verse line. In this context, alliteration acts both to create conceptual links across syntax and verse lines, and to lay emphasis on particular words, phrases and ideas. Medievalists have long recognized that in this way acoustic patterning works dynamically with semantic and thematic contributions to meaning, and operates to direct the attention of habituated audiences to particular repetitions and connections in narrative verse texts. Alliteration, then, not only enhances and ornaments verse, or takes part in metrical conventionality, but also contributes to conceptual chunking and textual meaning-making. As Boroff (Reference Boroff1962: 121) argues, successful medieval alliterative poems ‘derive a part of their expressive power from the reinforcement of connections among meanings by connections among sounds’. In turn, it could be argued that such an elaborate and ingrained method of connection presupposes and responds to a recognized, chunking element in the way in which poetic meaning is processed cognitively, as well as the way in which poems were committed to memory for oral recitation (see Sargent et al. Reference Sargent, Dopkins, Philbeck and Chichka2010).

To exemplify this technique and its narrative implications, I take as a sample the longest preserved Old English text, and probably the best known, Beowulf, a narrative poem of 3,180 lines, probably composed in the eighth century CE (though the date remains disputed). Written in Old English (the antecedent of Present-day English), Beowulf recounts three great battles undertaken by the titular hero, as well as providing a great deal of other information. Scholars have focused extensively on the so-called ‘digressions’ from the main plot in this text, and its peculiarly episodic narrative style, which nevertheless features a forward dynamic.Footnote ³ Indeed, the high incidence of long prospective and retrospective deviations from the central plot in Beowulf exemplifies large-scale interruptions to meaning, paralleling the phonological, metrical and other specifically poetic types of fragmentation evident in this text – and the overarching continuity in the flow of language and textual connectedness from within and among those interruptions.

3 Beowulf and alliteration

Beowulf is extant in a single (later) manuscript version (London, British Library, Cotton Vitelius A.XV), and was composed in Old English verse, with a caesura breaking each line into two half-lines, alliteration and distinctive metrical patterns. In this poem and others in Old English, the half-line is the syntactic unit, and the caesura is usually the end of a phrasal unit (Duggan Reference Duggan, Pearsall and Gibson1997: 228 ‘Metrical Rule 4’). Significantly, in this metrical scheme, alliteration links the two half-lines into a unit of meaning. The dynamic of these two formal features – alliteration and the caesura – in a line with various combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables, depending on the verse type, is powered by the initial sounds of at least two of the first three stressed syllables being either the same consonant (or consonant cluster, such as /st/, /sp/ or /sk/) or any vowel (see Minkova Reference Minkova2003).

While it is usual for one stressed syllable in the first half-line to alliterate with the first stressed syllable of the second half-line, and for the final syllable in a line not to alliterate, many orthodox verse types deploy further alliterating syllables. ‘Double alliteration’ occurs when both stressed syllables of the first half-line alliterate with the first stressed syllable of the second half-line, a phenomenon that occurs regularly across medieval English poetry, and which can be seen to attract additional emphasis or ornament to particular sections, words or ideas. For instance, in the following citation from Beowulf, the first line features standard alliteration (on /w/), the second, double (on /s/):

1. (1) Wiglaf maðelode, Weohstanes sunu

   sec sarigferð seah on unleofe (Beo 2862b–3)Footnote ⁴

   ‘Wiglaf spoke, son of Weohstan, sick, sad at heart, looked at the unloved ones.’

Here, the important kinship relationship between Wiglaf and Weohstan is emphasized via alliteration, and the cluster of ‘sick’ + ‘sad’ with seah (‘saw/looked on’), echoing the (non-alliterating) sunu (‘son’) of the previous line, creates a bridge across the two lines, thereby establishing an emotionally charged perceptual cluster that typifies Old English poetic technique, and inviting a complex emotional form of mental processing in the recipient. Moreover, the sole non-alliterating word on the second line unleofe (‘unloved ones’) marks the ‘non-Wiglaf’ group as affectively distinct, through cuing that is both acoustic and semantic.

The opening of the poem provides an instance of an even more emphatic alliterative pattern, known as transverse alliteration: Hwæt we Gardena in geardagum (1), ‘Lo, we. . . the Spear-Danes. . . in days of yore. . .’ where the pattern ‘g. . .d’ occurs in both Gardena and geardagum, emphatically connecting the deeply retrospective technique of the poem with the focal tribe, the Spear Danes, in a complex conceptual cluster. Scholars have noted distinct types of half-lines widely used in the Old English poetic tradition, featuring regular variations on such patterns for rhetorical and literary effect (see Minkova Reference Minkova1997; Terasawa Reference Terasawa2011).

Alliteration thereby lays semantic as well as metrical stress on particular words, and bridges the caesura, both acoustically and conceptually, by creating the expectation, and realization, of links. When additional alliteration is used, extra emphasis and a firmer form of chunking is possible. For instance, note the pattern of alliteration in the following excerpt, marked in bold, where all lines except 425 feature double alliteration:

1. (2)

   

At this point, where the hero is establishing his credentials, the double alliteration draws attention to this section of text in general, and the simpler alliteration on line 425 acts as a kind of relief, allowing the words aglacan (‘monster’) and ana (‘[I] alone’) to stand as a stark pair of imagined adversaries, foreshadowing the duel to come. Here, relative acoustic simplicity emphasizes not only key terms, but also their conceptual relationship. Metrical patterning thereby cues a particular type of linguistic processing that gathers ideas into certain clusters during meaning-making.

Several scholars have mapped the patterns of double alliteration in Beowulf, which is more prevalent than in other Old English verse (see Orchard Reference Orchard1995; Reference Orchard2003: 61), as well as the motivated, rhetorical deployment of alliteration more broadly in this poem (see Boroff Reference Boroff1962; Creed Reference Creed and Foley1981). Orchard has noted that the poet uses clusters of lines featuring double alliteration for emphasis and structure, in linking together sections of the poem, and has analysed the intricate patterning of double and transverse alliteration coinciding with apparently important moments in the narrative (see Orchard Reference Orchard2003: 21–6 on alliteration and 63–9 on the poet's use of wordplay, rhyme and assonance). Without going into the full particulars, nor straying into a detailed literary analysis of this poem, it is worth noting that specialist critics have demonstrated quite convincingly that the more adept Anglo-Saxon poets used alliteration and other sound-patterning techniques in sophisticated ways to operate in conjunction with referential and thematic meaning, and in particular to mark exciting events, emotional highpoints and symbolically significant features. For instance, when Beowulf is making preparations to engage the monster Grendel in battle, he makes a formal declaration of his intentions, in which the highly emotional concepts are marked by double alliteration (in bold) in conjunction with assonance (underlined) and rhyme (in italics):

1. (3)

   

This extract demonstrates how alliteration works in conjunction with euphony and sound repetition to foreground the salient nouns and to link ideas – to create an artful interplay among segmented components, and to chunk certain emphasized schemas into salient poetic constructions via complicated transverse patterning. For instance, in lines 453–4, the repeated sound /st/ at the ends of betst (‘best’), breost (‘breast/heart’) and selest (‘best’) emphasizes the excellence of the hero's heart. Further, the lines containing the proper names Higelac and Hrædlan feature single rather than double alliteration, thereby permitting the names to stand out emphatically by acoustic contrast, unlike most of the others. On the other hand, the phrase Welandes geweorc (‘Weland's work’) ties together alliteratively the smith's name and point of fame; and the link made between these words and wyrd (‘fate’) contributes a philosophical perspective on the legendary material and foreshadows the upcoming battle. Acoustic patterning thereby creates conceptual connections across larger linguistic units, to result in clusters of ideas that can be processed independently, as well as synthesized with other metrical, rhetorical and narrative networks in the text.

Here is a good example of the way in which form drives the activity of ‘leaning forward’, as the alliteration ties together the two halves of the caesura, across syntactic units, as well as lining up with metrical stress to foreground certain words or syllables and to emphasize the related conceptual content, which here has a forward-leaning perspective itself. The alliterative pattern being created is schematic: it primes the brain to notice repeated sounds and to hold them together with other like sounds, to chunk the discourse across multiple syntactic segments. As Tsur (Reference Tsur1996: 59) argues, ‘sound patterns such as rhyme and alliteration not only “exploit” the working of the auditory short-term memory but actually enhance it’. Tsur is most interested in rhyme, and the way in which it ‘reverberates in echoic memory’ (Reference Tsur1996: 74), but alliteration can be seen as a similar feature of ‘phonic coding’, one that contributes to coherence and counterpoint, even beyond the level of the line. For instance, Boroff (Reference Boroff1962: 126) has noted the attraction of ideas and alliterating words to the adjective god (‘good’), used in the poem in relation to kings and thegns, to create a sense of continuity, and to contrast with the evil represented by the three monsters.

The consistent use of alliteration as a major structuring principle in Old English poetry also had an impact on lexical choices and range: for many key concepts, there exist several almost synonymous terms, beginning with different letters, to provide a variety of poetic choices, which is why certain words are shown to have been used wholly or predominantly in poetry.Footnote ⁵ For example, the semantic range of ‘mind, heart, self’ is covered by the dominant term, mōd (antecedent of PDE mood), as well as hyge, sefa and mōdsefa (see Harbus Reference Harbus2002: 34–7). In Old English, this distinctive poetic vocabulary was fundamentally tied to the requirements of alliteration. It is significant that as a result of the cultural and linguistic shifts after the Norman Conquest of 1066, most of these poetic terms fell out of use. Similarly, in the practice of translating texts from Latin, in order to capture the full semantic range of the host word, or to provide additional emphasis, synonymous doublets were employed (e.g. Beo 1741a, weaxeð ond wrideð ‘grows and flourishes’) many of which have remained in use in Present-day English as frozen forms, especially when they alliterate (e.g. kith and kin: see Orchard Reference Orchard2003: 30). These doublets can be considered as particularly marked and durable grammatical constructions. Even more interestingly, assonance and verbal repetition and patterning can be used to make those links over even larger expanses of text, or to invite a conceptual blend, as in the case of the name Daniel (Heb. ‘judgement’) and the Old English word dōm, connoting ‘judgement’ in the verse version of the Old Testament Book of Daniel (see Frank Reference Frank1972).

This oral poetic narrative tradition also generated and relied on the use of prefabricated lines and half-lines, which again supplies evidence for the idiomatic and emphatic use of conceptual chunking in Old English: ‘Alliterative poets shared a common grammar of composition, a set of grammetrical moulds, often accompanied by semantic collocations in more or less fixed formulae, from which metrical half-lines were generated’ (Duggan Reference Duggan, Pearsall and Gibson1997: 230). This reuse of identical or similar material – or examples of grammatical constructions – across poems permits, and perhaps encourages, extra-textual connections to be made. For instance, heard under helme occurs three times in Beowulf, and captures the idea of ‘brave/strong under the helmet’ (i.e. ‘resolute of mind’), a culturally valued descriptor that acquires additional emphasis via alliteration and repetition.Footnote ⁶ Similarly, the whole line Hroðgar maþelode helm Scyldinga ‘Hrothgar spoke, leader of the Scyldings’ occurs three times (lines 371, 456, 1321), and creates a strong link between the name Hrothgar and the word helm (‘leader’), thereby cementing the conceptual relationship developed.

Such alliterative connections work in conjunction with what has been termed an ‘appositive style’ in Beowulf: where words stand close to one another, with the same referent, and are logically connected and syntactically parallel (via parataxis), as in the example immediately above (Robinson Reference Robinson1985; O'Brien O'Keeffe Reference O'Brien O'Keeffe1997). Such multiple references are possible as a result of the flexible syntax of Old English poetic style. Fred Robinson (Reference Robinson1985: 80) has described appositions as ‘the automatic means by which an Old English poet proceeds from thought to thought. They can be simultaneously transitional, nominalizing and emphasizing as they bring out by suggestion the complex meanings of events, motifs, and words.’ Since apposition, or ‘variation’, frequently relies on the use of near-synonymous terms, which the poetic lexicon provided, here is a further dimension of the cohesive and chunking potential of alliteration, as well as the lexical interruptions to continuity through verbal redundancies such as variation and doublets, that not only accommodate poetic segmentation, but artfully exploit it, in the dynamic interplay of narrative fragmentation and acoustic synthesis. These are characteristics not only of Beowulf, but also of other poetry produced in Anglo-Saxon England and beyond.

4 Alliteration in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Many of these formal characteristics were carried over (with modifications: see Minkova Reference Minkova2003, esp. 238–45) into the Middle English period after the Norman Conquest of 1066, particularly in the poems of the ‘Alliterative Revival’ that consciously deploy the verse form of Old English in this later context, perhaps as a form of conscious antiquarianism, adapting imported words to existing verse patterns (Niles Reference Niles1978: 26). Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (c. 1360–90) is one poem that adopts features of the Old English alliterative tradition, combined with the introduction of stanzas, a packet of meaning, or segmentation, within the poem that is partially separate from the larger text (Addison Reference Addison2003). This poem is an anonymous Arthurian romance of 2,530 lines that is characterized by several levels of elaborate segmentation, or verse chunking, that rely on the creation of constructions that can be independently processed as well as integrated into narrative and rhetorical structures. The poetic lines are collected into four sections (or fits, at lines 1, 491, 1126 and 1998), which collectively comprise 101 stanzas (or strophes), of various lengths (12–37 lines), each ending with a metrically different five-line ‘bob-and-wheel’ section, rhyming ababa (a single iambic foot, then four lines of iambic trimeter). Like Old English, some Middle English poetry uses alliteration, which functions to cue synthesis and meaning-making across the segmentation, and which is at times sufficiently predictable to permit emendation on the basis of patterning (see Jefferson & Putter Reference Jefferson and Putter2005; Solopova Reference Solopova, Jefferson and Putter2009). As Duggan (Reference Duggan, Pearsall and Gibson1997: 229) notes, there is a ‘tendency towards phrasal aggregation as the principle of syntactic development in alliterative poetry’. Similarly, Mary Hamel has demonstrated how half-line breaks take the place of most punctuation in Middle English manuscripts, and thereby provide flexibility to syntactic inference (Hamel Reference Hamel1984: 23). Such phrasing and layout provide cues to textual processing via networks of overlapping patterns created through conceptual chunking.

The text recounts the testing of the titular knight of the Round Table, Sir Gawain, who is challenged to a beheading contest by a visiting knight, who survives the axe blow he challenges Gawain to make, then arranges to return the favour a year and a day later. It is an accomplished example of the genre, featuring marvellous and chivalric elements, as well as an unusual level of moral complication, in that Gawain is not altogether honest with his host when he accepts and fails to exchange a life-saving sash from the lady of the house. The chief editors of the text, Andrew and Waldron, regard the poem as deploying ‘a sophisticated narrative technique, in which point of view is handled with particular subtlety’,Footnote ⁷ especially in representing the thoughts, imaginations and perceptions of several key characters, and inviting the audience into the complex moral dilemma of the hero, who wishes to save his life, but also to play by the rules of his chivalric code, which conflict with his desire in this context.

In terms of verse form and the use of stress, Duggan's (Reference Duggan, Pearsall and Gibson1997: 223) point is well taken: ‘Stress is less an acoustic phenomenon than a psychological one, a perceptual cue created not only by relative volume but also at times by duration, pitch, (dis)juncture, and in poetry by metrical expectation.’ This technical comment supports McHale's idea of ‘leaning forward’. In terms of coherence, Duggan goes on to remark that ‘in general, word stress is subordinate to phrasal stress, and phrasal stress in alliterative poetry, as in normal speech, tends to fall on the tonic syllable of semantically important words’ (Reference Duggan, Pearsall and Gibson1997: 223). As with the stress and phrasing of Old English poetry, there is a deep correspondence between Middle English verse and normal speech, as alliteration usually occurs in stressed syllables. Poetic rhythm here is accentual, and the coincidence of the phrasal unit and the half-line results in frequent enjambment (Duggan Reference Duggan, Pearsall and Gibson1997: 230).

In Middle English, conventional alliterative rules were modified and regularized, and are similar to those pertaining to Old English metre, with two half-lines, and a tendency for the line rather than the half-line to be the syntactic unit, with a great deal of variation on this general rule (see Andrew & Waldron Reference Andrew and Waldron2007: 44–8). Generally, three or more words alliterate within a line, yet scholars have recognized seven standard types of alliteration used by this poet (Duggan Reference Duggan, Pearsall and Gibson1997: 224). Moreover, there are extended lines, where there are more than four stressed syllables, and more than three alliterating words. The opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight demonstrate the strong alliteration used throughout:

1. (4) Siþen þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye,

   Þe borʒ brittened and brent to brondez and askez,

   Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wroʒt

   Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe. (1–4)

   ‘After the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy,

   The city destroyed and burned to brands and ashes,

   The man who wrought there the nets of treason

   Was tried for his treachery, the clearest (case) on earth.’

The five words starting with ‘/tr/’ in the last two lines create a strong connection among the concepts of ‘man’, ‘tried’ and ‘treachery’ which combine to form a complex syntactic chunk that has linguistic, conceptual and thematic implications, particularly in the opposition of truth and treachery that constitutes a dominant motif in the poem. From the outset, then, the audience is primed to notice this contrast, which influences cognitive processing and interpretation throughout the textual encounter. Later in the text, at the pivotal moment when Gawain flinches before the axe-blow, alliteration similarly drives narrative meaning-making when it ties together his ‘shrinking’, ‘shoulders’, and the ‘sharpness’ of the axe, to create a cluster around the idea of reasonable fear, a central and nuanced moral equivocation expressed in the text:

1. (5) Bot Gawayn on þat giserne glyfte hym bysynde,

   As hit com glyddande adoun on glode hym to schende,

   And schrank a lytel with þe schulderes for þe scharp iren (2265–7)

   ‘But Gawain glanced sideways away from that axe

   As it came gliding down towards the ground to destroy him,

   And shrank a little with the shoulders before the sharp iron.’

Here, primary stress and alliteration coincide, as is usually the case, but there are exceptions. Extra alliteration can coincide with intermediate stress (e.g. Braydez out a bryʒt bront, 1584a ‘draws out a bright blade’). Further, where alliteration and stress do not fall on the same syllable, acoustic expectations can be overturned for rhetorical effect, as in ‘Ma fay’, quoþ þe meré wyf, ‘ʒe may not be werned. . .’ (1495) ‘“My faith”, said the lovely lady, “you may not be refused”’. Such flexible inversion of the patterns ‘often seems to be used to level out prominences for the more prosaic uses of the metre. . . an artful interplay between the alliteration and the natural stress and intonation of spoken discourse’ (Andrew & Waldron Reference Andrew and Waldron2007: 47). As this example shows, alliteration drives the leaning-forward aspect of poetic meaning-making so emphatically that its absence can be used for rhetorical effect as a break in the expected acoustic patterning.

Alliteration also influences lexis and semantic range. Owing to the need for alliterating words and those of particular phonetic form, otherwise specialized words are used with a generalized sense, as was the case in Old English: for instance, wale (398), which normally connotes ‘choose’, here suggests ‘find’, with the effect of ‘immediacy and concreteness to the language’ (Andrew & Waldron Reference Andrew and Waldron2007: 44). As with Old English, the alliterating synonymous doublet is used for emphasis: for instance, in the opening line of the poem, þe s ege and þe as s aut ‘the siege and the assault’ (also sp yed and sp ured ‘inquired and asked’, line 901). Scholars have noted the variations in register, between the colloquial and the formal, and the wide range of synonyms, both general and poetic, for key ideas such as ‘man’ (Tolkien & Gordon Reference Tolkien, Gordon and Davis1967: 139). As with Old English, here we can see a distinctive poetic-only vocabulary, sustained by the strong structuring principle of alliteration.

In a narrative technique where acoustic patterning underpins content-level information and interlaces chunks of meaning that result from verse segmentation, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight combines alliteration with rhyme, especially in the bob-and-wheel sections at the end of stanzas, which are syntactically linked to the stanzas themselves. For example, the final line of the sentence runs on to the metrically distinct bob-and-wheel, which runs into the first line of the following stanza:

1. (6) Þe blod schot for scham into his schyre face

   and lere;

   He wex as wrothe as w ynde

   So did all þat þer were.

   Þe kyng, as kene bi k ynde,

   Þen stod þat stif mon nere,

   And sayde: ‘Haþel, by heuen þyn asking is nys. . .’ (317–23)

   ‘The blood shot, for shame, into his fair face

   And cheek

   He grew as angry as the wind

   So did all who were there.

   The king, as brave as he was by nature,

   Then stood near that brave man,

   And said: ‘Sir, by heaven, your asking is silly. . .’

Strong alliteration (in bold) works here in conjunction with rhyme (in italic) and metrical variation to create links across the lines and sentences – to create chunks and clusters of chunks within the stanza. This citation also exemplifies the descriptive narration used in these bob-and-wheel sections, which is employed in this poem, along with intrusive narration.Footnote ⁸ Such sections of the text are distinct also because they offer brisk narrative summaries of what has occurred in the preceding stanza, and have a change of tempo, with shorter lines, the introduction of a new acoustic technique, rhyme and the continuation of alliteration. Content-level change in how information is managed is thereby mirrored acoustically, where condensed content is paired with more complex sound patterning in a direct correlation of conceptual and acoustic intensity, and as a result, a greater demand on the textual recipient to integrate the chunked segments.

5 Alliteration, narrative coherence and poetic processing

So, how do these aspects of storytelling and poetic form work together, and what cognitively, does the reader (or hearer) do in attempting to make coherence and to process syntactic and acoustic information? At the level of acoustic devices employing rhythm and sound, including alliteration and assonance, the textual recipient is cued to perceive and to synthesize multiple patterns, conceptual clusters, and networks and systems among those chunks, and thereby to draw connections. The pre-bundled packets of meaning in the formulaic half-lines that recur across the text likewise invite recognition of the broader patterns and links, and prompt the audience to recognize and interpret networked phonically and conceptually coherent chunks of data. As Tsur (Reference Tsur1985: 417) argues, the metrical form of poetry is properly considered a ‘perceptual condition’ of the total meaning effect, and we need to be aware of the ‘combined potentials of metrical, syntactical and thematical elements’. The dynamics of segment interaction, synthesis and integration rely on and accommodate the acoustic features of alliteration and rhyme.

An important aspect of this embedded rhythmicality and patterning of poetic narrative is the fundamentally embodied nature of its reception, and the recruitment of the emotion/cognition nexus, as well as memory, during the interpretive process. Guillemette Bolens (Reference Bolens2007) has shown how embodied knowledge – kinesic intelligence – is called upon during both composition and reading. Most importantly, during oral recitation or reception in particular, the alliterative patterning that dominates medieval English poetry is felt in the body, at the subvocal level of patterned consonant production. Bolens treats Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as one of her focal texts, tracing textual parallels (e.g. beheading and hunting; seduction and hunting), and using her analytic technique to account for the links (including verbal repetition) that make such event-echoes perceptible to the reader. For instance, the three references to ‘a sharp blade slitting through a body's shining grease’Footnote ⁹ constitute such a cluster of verbal repetition and ‘shared meaning’ with bodily referents and shared embodied understanding. Of course, all of the references to cut bodies in the text anticipate Gawain's scheduled beheading, the narrative climax, and foreshadow his quite understandable flinching away from the axe-blow, mentioned above.

Bolens’ mapping of patterns and echoes across the text provides convincing evidence of the embodied systems of meaning encoded in the text. Her argument can be developed further in that such patterns can be seen to operate in conjunction with acoustic patterns, which are apprehended physically. Alliteration signals acoustic similarity and marked emphasis via discursive patterning, with the result that grammatical constructions that are susceptible to independent processing are connected and chunked into larger, more complex configurations. Because it occurs at the head of the word and routinely marks the first stressed syllable of the poetic line, as well as being visually apparent in a written version, alliteration is extremely prominent, and therefore capable of strong emphasis and patterning, a rhythm felt in the body during textual processing. Alliteration spaces out the metrical stress of the line, and in turn sections the content-level stress, and the silences of breaks, including the ambiguous pause of the caesura, which marks off sense units, but is bridged by the pattern of alliteration in the line.

Alliteration, like the caesura of both texts analysed here, and the bob-and-wheel of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, is a distinctive feature of medieval English poetic discursive chunking and conceptual clustering. Although only two longer narrative texts have been treated here as sample texts, it is a widely apparent feature of both the Old and Middle English verse traditions, so the ideas and techniques shown here could be applied to any extant poems from these two traditions, and indeed to other poetry featuring alliteration. This acoustic and metrical device should therefore be considered an element of poetic narrative technique that operates both to distinguish syllables, words and concepts, and to integrate a subset of those parts into significant clusters of sound and meaning in verse texts. These poetic examples can extend the scope of Construction Grammar to consider older instances of aesthetically formal and metrically significant structures capable of independent processing. These examples can in turn complicate our understanding of how conceptual clusters can be marked for salient similarity, and operate in several levels of accretion in literary contexts. We have seen that there is extra fragmentation and measurement, but also more complex patterning and countermeasurement in alliterative poetry. Even putting aside the number and colour symbolism, heroic codes and other content-level information evident in the texts treated here, the interaction of concept and alliteration, and half-line and line, provides networks of cohesion across texts, a determining logic that both relies on complex segmentation as an integral feature of story-telling technique, and also triggers an interpretive response that deploys schematic constructions with syntactic and acoustic patterning components.

Alliteration is a poetic feature that cues auditory anticipation and synthesis, counterpoised with units of meaning prescribed referentially, semantically or metrically. Alliteration breaks up the flow of sound, and patterns language to develop structure and coherence: it creates connection via networks of construction that are linked acoustically, as well as contributing to the aesthetic artistry of the text. Such a basic and pervasive feature of poetic expression and narrative technique both acknowledges and is implicated in the way in which information is segmented and clustered in verse storytelling. Alliterative patterns accommodate the drive for coherence by signalling connection, chunking and emphasis, cuing conceptual networking, and contributing to the aesthetic qualities of poetry. They are both embedded in and distinctive to narrative in poetic form, and determine the particular way in which cognitive strategies suitable for poetic processing are triggered through alliteratively delineated grammatical constructions.