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Rafael J. Pascual

Universidad de Granada, Departamento de Filologías Inglesa y Alemana, Faculty Member

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Rafael J. Pascual is Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the Department of English and Germanic Philology of the University of Granada. Previously, he was Stipendiary Lecturer in English at New College, Lecturer in Old and Middle English at Magdalen College, and Departmental Lecturer in English Language and Literature at the Faculty of English and Pembroke College, University of Oxford. Between 2018 and 2022, he was Postdoctoral Research Assistant at CLASP: A Consolidated Library of Anglo-Saxon England (an ERC-funded project based at the Oxford English Faculty), and between 2015 and 2017 Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard University.

He received his Ph.D. from the University of Granada (2014), with a dissertation on the dating and textual criticism of Beowulf, on the strength of which he gained a two-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University. He is the co-editor, with Leonard Neidorf and Tom Shippey, of Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R. D. Fulk (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), and one of the contributors to The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014). His articles on Old and Middle English alliterative poetry have appeared in journals such as English Studies, Journal of Germanic Linguistics, Neophilologus, Studia Neophilologica, Notes and Queries, and ANQ.

His current project, 'Continental Sources of Anglo-Saxon Poetry', has been funded by the State Research Agency of Spain (AEI) through a grant of €120,000 additional to salary (Grant ID: RYC2022-035374-I).

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Books by Rafael J. Pascual

Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R.D. Fulk

by Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, and Tom Shippey

Essays by Rafael J. Pascual

Review of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth

SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, 2023

Beowulf 501b and the authority of Old English poetical manuscripts

Neophilologus

In his Old English grammar, A. Campbell put forward his theory of Old English accentuation, accor... more In his Old English grammar, A. Campbell put forward his theory of Old English accentuation, according to which disyllabic words like Bēowulf and ǣniġ receive a half-stress only if made trisyllabic by the addition of an inflection (as in Bēowulfes or ǣniġra), provided the middle syllable is heavy. A. J. Bliss tacitly rejected Campbell's analysis when he postulated the existence of metrical type 3B2, a rare rhythmical pattern in which trisyllabic forms like Bēowulfes and ǣniġra must exceptionally be assumed to lose their otherwise conventional halfstress. Bliss based his analysis on the evidence afforded by four readings from the text of Beowulf: ll. 501b, 932b, 949b, and 1830b. Even though Bliss expressed reservations about his own analysis, he still preferred it to the alternative possibility of emending these four exceptional verses (a possibility that he did not even consider in his book). Non-metrical arguments in support of the emendation of at least one of these verses (1830b), however, had been advanced well before The metre of Beowulf was first published. Since then, ll. 932b and 949b have also been emended on grounds other than metre. This article offers new linguistic reasons for the emendation of l. 501b, the one remaining reading for which no alternative explanation had yet been proposed. It concludes that Bliss was unnecessarily cautious in his treatment of these four aberrant verses, and that, as Kenneth Sisam memorably stated in 1946, conjectural emendation is, and still remains, a useful tool for the study of Old English poetical manuscripts. Keywords Beowulf • Textual criticism • Old English poetry • Manuscript studies Personal names like Hrōðgār and Gūðlāf, which consist of two different elements or themes (for which reason they are known as dithematic), abound in Old English heroic verse. In terms of accentuation, these names can be seen to have affinities to

Old English Dithematic Names and the Reliability of Sieversian Metrics

English Studies, 2020

In an iconoclastic essay published in 2003, Thomas A. Bredehoft contended that Old English dithem... more In an iconoclastic essay published in 2003, Thomas A. Bredehoft contended that Old English dithematic names are prosodically identical to compound words despite the existence of compelling evidence to the contrary. He founded his analysis on the allegedly overlooked evidence afforded by the participation of names in non-primary patterns of alliteration in Beowulf and their manuscript presentation. Moreover, because the traditional notion that dithematic names and compounds have different prosodic configurations is to a large extent based on the evidence furnished by Eduard Sievers's metrical paradigm, Bredehoft argued that such a paradigm is erroneous and hence ineffective as a tool for the study of the Old English language. After submitting Bredehoft's argumentation to critical examination, this article concludes that his theory makes the wrong predictions about the behaviour of dithematic names in verse, and that, consequently, it should not be considered a valid interpretation of their prosodic configuration. It is also argued that the Sieversian model is essentially correct, and that it therefore constitutes a reliable means for the analysis of the grammatical structure of Old English.

A Possible Emendation of Beowulf 1042a

Notes & Queries, 2019

Oral Tradition and the History of English Alliterative Verse

Beowulf 1889b, Andreas 1221b and Old English Poetic Style

In a short paragraph of his 'Die Metrik des Beowulf' (1885), Eduard Sievers proposed emendation o... more In a short paragraph of his 'Die Metrik des Beowulf' (1885), Eduard Sievers proposed emendation of preterite plural bǣron to infinitival beran at l. 1889b. This emendation has much to commend it, but it has not been accepted by the majority of editors of the poem. This article adduces new palaeographical, metrical and stylistic evidence in support of Sievers's proposal, and it also argues that the preterite plural forms bǣron and mǣton at Andreas 1221b and Beowulf 1633b should likewise be emended to infinitival beran and metan.

Two Possible Emendations of Beowulf 2088a

Notes and Queries, 2019

Bliss's Rule and Old English Metrics

According to Eduard Sievers’s theory of Old Germanic metre (1885, 1893), the most basic rule of O... more According to Eduard Sievers’s theory of Old Germanic metre (1885, 1893), the most basic rule of Old English poetic composition is the so-called four-position principle (according to which, a verse is regular, regardless of its number of syllables, if it consists of no more and no less than four metrical positions). In order to enable this principle to work regularly, Sievers posited the existence of resolution, a process of syllabic equivalence whereby a short stressed syllable and its unstressed successor count metrically as a long stressed syllable. This process of syllabic equivalence has also been independently observed in a non-metrical context. In 1981, A. J. Bliss discovered that the first half-line of the verse clause is the mandatory syntactic position not only for monosyllabic auxiliary verbs, but also for their resolved disyllabic equivalents (Bliss’s rule). In this paper, I argue (1) that the discernible operation of resolution in a syntactic context that is independent of Sievers’s four-position framework demonstrates resolution to be a real entity of Old English; and (2) that the demonstrable reality of resolution in turn corroborates the fundamental correctness of Sievers’s metrical theory.

"Material Monsters and Semantic Shifts," in The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, ed. Leonard Neidorf (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014), 202-218

Alliterative Metre and Medieval English Literary History

Atlantis, 2018

Manuscript Evidence and Metrical Authenticity: A Response to Seiichi Suzuki

The vast majority of the approximately 60,000 verses that constitute the surviving corpus of Old ... more The vast majority of the approximately 60,000 verses that constitute the surviving corpus of Old English poetry can be shown to have, despite their differing number of syllables, a basic structure of exactly four metrical positions. 1 Indeed, four-position verses are so numerous in the texts, and obvious scribal corruptions are so frequent, that Sieversian metrists have traditionally regarded the few verses that apparently consist of less than four positions as the mere products of scribal interference, even if those verses are unobjectionable in terms of grammar, sense, and alliteration. 2 * I thank Daniel Donoghue, R. D. Fulk, and Leonard Neidorf for reading this essay in draft and offering valuable suggestions. 1 On the relationship between syllables and metrical positions in Old English verse, see, for example, Sievers 1893: § §9-10, Fulk 2002:337-340, Pascual 2014:811-812, 2015:174-175. A full exposition of the four-position principle can be found in Cable 1974:84-93. For a historical account of this principle, see Pascual 2016. 2 The following quote is illustrative of the traditional skeptical position of Sieversian metrists toward manuscript evidence:

"Sievers, Bliss, Fulk, and Old English Metrical Theory," in Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R.D. Fulk, ed. Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, and Tom Shippey (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2016), 17-33

Old English Metrical History and the Composition of Widsið

In an attempt to refute the traditional notion that portions of Widsið were composed before the a... more In an attempt to refute the traditional notion that portions of Widsið were composed before the adventus Saxonum, Eric Weiskott recently resurrected a dating method employed by early twentieth-century literary historians, which consists of
checking the forms that the half-lines of a poetic text would have had in prehistoric Old English against the well-known four-position rule of historical verse construction in order to establish a terminus a quo for its composition. This method is thus predicated on the assumption that the four-position principle obtained before the occurrence of certain prehistoric sound changes. The present essay advances a series of arguments that demonstrate that the four-position rule is the result of the evolution of the Old English language, and that it is therefore wrong to assume that it was already operative in the prehistory of Old English.

On a Crux in Beowulf: The Alliteration of Finite Verbs and the Scribal Understanding of Metre

Because of its faulty alliteration and irregular metrical configuration, the manuscript reading f... more Because of its faulty alliteration and irregular metrical configuration, the manuscript reading felasinniġne secg, corresponding to l. 1379a of Beowulf, has traditionally been emended to sinniġne secg by most editors of the poem, who have thus regarded fela as a scribal interpolation. As the editors of Klaeber IV have suggested, the rationale behind such an interpolation probably is that the scribe mistook 1378b, ðǣr þū findan miht, and 1379a as a verse pair, thereby introducing fela in order to remedy the lack of f alliteration. This is a credible hypothesis, since the initial consonant of the word interpolated by the scribe into 1379a alliterates with that of findan in 1378b. Why the scribe should have failed to recognize 1379b, sēċ ġif þū dyrre, as the pair of 1379a in the first place, however, remains an unresolved crux in Beowulf textual criticism. The present essay argues that because of his deficient understanding of the principles of verse construction, the scribe was unable to recognize the finite verb sēċ as the legitimate alliterative link of l. 1379a. By virtue of their intermediate prosodic status, the metrical behaviour of finite verbs, unlike that of stress-words and proclitics, is variable. Such variability is governed by a series of metrical rules whose ultimate rationale is the preservation of the four-position structure of the verse. If the scribe was ignorant of the four-position principle, as this essay argues, then he would have lacked the ability to scan the finite verb sēċ correctly. It is this inability to scan sēċ that would have led him to prefer the pairing of 1378b and 1379a, despite their failure to alliterate, to the pairing of 1379a and 1379b. Besides positing a new metrical rule that has not been fully articulated in previous scholarship, this essay explores the crucial implications that the scribes’ deficient understanding of Old English metre has for textual criticism.

The Language of Beowulf and the Conditioning of Kaluza's Law

by Leonard Neidorf and Rafael J. Pascual

In Beowulf, there are 106 verses in which second compound elements are unambiguously distributed ... more In Beowulf, there are 106 verses in which second compound elements are unambiguously distributed into positions of resolution or non-resolution on the basis of etymological length distinctions that became phonologically indistinct early in the Anglo-Saxon period. The conditioning behind this linguistic regularity (Kaluza's law) has been the subject of considerable dispute. R. D. Fulk argued that this regularity was phonologically conditioned: the Beowulf poet consistently distinguished between etymologically long and short desinences because he composed before they became phonologically indistinct. Some scholars have sought to explain this regularity by proposing that it was semantically or morphologically conditioned, while others have invoked oral tradition and narrative considerations in their efforts to explain it. The present article gauges the relative probability of these competing hypotheses and demonstrates that the hypothesis of phonological conditioning is the only tenable explanation. It is therefore probable that Beowulf was composed in Mercia prior to the year 725, by which time distinctions of etymological length had become phonologically indistinct.

Ælfric's Rhythmical Prose and the Study of Old English Metre

A decade ago, Thomas A. Bredehoft designed a new theory of Old English metre that classified Ælfr... more A decade ago, Thomas A. Bredehoft designed a new theory of Old English metre that classified Ælfric of Eynsham's rhythmical-alliterative texts as verse. The present article submits Bredehoft's metrical theory to critical scrutiny by means of three case studies. The first deals with Bredehoft's case for simplicity in metrical argumentation; the second assesses the theoretical validity of Bredehoft's exclusively syllabic substitute for the traditional four-position principle; and the third focuses on Bredehoft's metrical system for late Old English metre and its application to Ælfric's rhythmical-alliterative texts. These three case studies demonstrate that Bredehoft's theory is empirically insufficient, since it is unable to account for significant distributional patterns that occur in the surviving manuscripts. Bredehoft's claim about Ælfric's rhythmical texts is therefore devoid of meaning, since it is predicated on the untenable principles of his metrical theory. The essay concludes by characterizing Ælfric's rhythmical-alliterative style as a particular manner of prose composition informed by the didactic temper that obtained during Æthelred's reign.

Three-Position Verses and the Metrical Pratice of the Beowulf Poet

This article assesses the authenticity of the three-position SS verse type in Beowulf on the bas... more This article assesses the authenticity of the three-position SS verse type in Beowulf on the basis of its unambiguous incidence both in Beowulf and in a larger corpus of Old English poetry. The first part of this essay examines the metrical configuration of thirteen verses from Beowulf that have recently been identified as instances of the SS pattern. In doing so, it demonstrates that nearly all of them furnish a standard four-position metrical structure. The second part discusses the empirical obstacles to accepting the formal legitimacy of the three-position SS pattern in Old English verse, thereby reaffirming the validity of the stricture of traditional Sieversian metrics against verses consisting of less than four metrical positions.

Reviews by Rafael J. Pascual

S. Pons-Sanz, The Lexical Effects of Anglo-Scandinavian Linguistic Contact on Old English

J. Terasawa, Old English Metre: An Introduction

Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R.D. Fulk

by Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, and Tom Shippey

Review of J. R. R. Tolkien, The Battle of Maldon together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth

SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, 2023

Beowulf 501b and the authority of Old English poetical manuscripts

Neophilologus

In his Old English grammar, A. Campbell put forward his theory of Old English accentuation, accor... more In his Old English grammar, A. Campbell put forward his theory of Old English accentuation, according to which disyllabic words like Bēowulf and ǣniġ receive a half-stress only if made trisyllabic by the addition of an inflection (as in Bēowulfes or ǣniġra), provided the middle syllable is heavy. A. J. Bliss tacitly rejected Campbell's analysis when he postulated the existence of metrical type 3B2, a rare rhythmical pattern in which trisyllabic forms like Bēowulfes and ǣniġra must exceptionally be assumed to lose their otherwise conventional halfstress. Bliss based his analysis on the evidence afforded by four readings from the text of Beowulf: ll. 501b, 932b, 949b, and 1830b. Even though Bliss expressed reservations about his own analysis, he still preferred it to the alternative possibility of emending these four exceptional verses (a possibility that he did not even consider in his book). Non-metrical arguments in support of the emendation of at least one of these verses (1830b), however, had been advanced well before The metre of Beowulf was first published. Since then, ll. 932b and 949b have also been emended on grounds other than metre. This article offers new linguistic reasons for the emendation of l. 501b, the one remaining reading for which no alternative explanation had yet been proposed. It concludes that Bliss was unnecessarily cautious in his treatment of these four aberrant verses, and that, as Kenneth Sisam memorably stated in 1946, conjectural emendation is, and still remains, a useful tool for the study of Old English poetical manuscripts. Keywords Beowulf • Textual criticism • Old English poetry • Manuscript studies Personal names like Hrōðgār and Gūðlāf, which consist of two different elements or themes (for which reason they are known as dithematic), abound in Old English heroic verse. In terms of accentuation, these names can be seen to have affinities to

Old English Dithematic Names and the Reliability of Sieversian Metrics

English Studies, 2020

In an iconoclastic essay published in 2003, Thomas A. Bredehoft contended that Old English dithem... more In an iconoclastic essay published in 2003, Thomas A. Bredehoft contended that Old English dithematic names are prosodically identical to compound words despite the existence of compelling evidence to the contrary. He founded his analysis on the allegedly overlooked evidence afforded by the participation of names in non-primary patterns of alliteration in Beowulf and their manuscript presentation. Moreover, because the traditional notion that dithematic names and compounds have different prosodic configurations is to a large extent based on the evidence furnished by Eduard Sievers's metrical paradigm, Bredehoft argued that such a paradigm is erroneous and hence ineffective as a tool for the study of the Old English language. After submitting Bredehoft's argumentation to critical examination, this article concludes that his theory makes the wrong predictions about the behaviour of dithematic names in verse, and that, consequently, it should not be considered a valid interpretation of their prosodic configuration. It is also argued that the Sieversian model is essentially correct, and that it therefore constitutes a reliable means for the analysis of the grammatical structure of Old English.

A Possible Emendation of Beowulf 1042a

Notes & Queries, 2019

Oral Tradition and the History of English Alliterative Verse

Beowulf 1889b, Andreas 1221b and Old English Poetic Style

In a short paragraph of his 'Die Metrik des Beowulf' (1885), Eduard Sievers proposed emendation o... more In a short paragraph of his 'Die Metrik des Beowulf' (1885), Eduard Sievers proposed emendation of preterite plural bǣron to infinitival beran at l. 1889b. This emendation has much to commend it, but it has not been accepted by the majority of editors of the poem. This article adduces new palaeographical, metrical and stylistic evidence in support of Sievers's proposal, and it also argues that the preterite plural forms bǣron and mǣton at Andreas 1221b and Beowulf 1633b should likewise be emended to infinitival beran and metan.

Two Possible Emendations of Beowulf 2088a

Notes and Queries, 2019

Bliss's Rule and Old English Metrics

According to Eduard Sievers’s theory of Old Germanic metre (1885, 1893), the most basic rule of O... more According to Eduard Sievers’s theory of Old Germanic metre (1885, 1893), the most basic rule of Old English poetic composition is the so-called four-position principle (according to which, a verse is regular, regardless of its number of syllables, if it consists of no more and no less than four metrical positions). In order to enable this principle to work regularly, Sievers posited the existence of resolution, a process of syllabic equivalence whereby a short stressed syllable and its unstressed successor count metrically as a long stressed syllable. This process of syllabic equivalence has also been independently observed in a non-metrical context. In 1981, A. J. Bliss discovered that the first half-line of the verse clause is the mandatory syntactic position not only for monosyllabic auxiliary verbs, but also for their resolved disyllabic equivalents (Bliss’s rule). In this paper, I argue (1) that the discernible operation of resolution in a syntactic context that is independent of Sievers’s four-position framework demonstrates resolution to be a real entity of Old English; and (2) that the demonstrable reality of resolution in turn corroborates the fundamental correctness of Sievers’s metrical theory.

"Material Monsters and Semantic Shifts," in The Dating of Beowulf: A Reassessment, ed. Leonard Neidorf (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2014), 202-218

Alliterative Metre and Medieval English Literary History

Atlantis, 2018

Manuscript Evidence and Metrical Authenticity: A Response to Seiichi Suzuki

The vast majority of the approximately 60,000 verses that constitute the surviving corpus of Old ... more The vast majority of the approximately 60,000 verses that constitute the surviving corpus of Old English poetry can be shown to have, despite their differing number of syllables, a basic structure of exactly four metrical positions. 1 Indeed, four-position verses are so numerous in the texts, and obvious scribal corruptions are so frequent, that Sieversian metrists have traditionally regarded the few verses that apparently consist of less than four positions as the mere products of scribal interference, even if those verses are unobjectionable in terms of grammar, sense, and alliteration. 2 * I thank Daniel Donoghue, R. D. Fulk, and Leonard Neidorf for reading this essay in draft and offering valuable suggestions. 1 On the relationship between syllables and metrical positions in Old English verse, see, for example, Sievers 1893: § §9-10, Fulk 2002:337-340, Pascual 2014:811-812, 2015:174-175. A full exposition of the four-position principle can be found in Cable 1974:84-93. For a historical account of this principle, see Pascual 2016. 2 The following quote is illustrative of the traditional skeptical position of Sieversian metrists toward manuscript evidence:

"Sievers, Bliss, Fulk, and Old English Metrical Theory," in Old English Philology: Studies in Honour of R.D. Fulk, ed. Leonard Neidorf, Rafael J. Pascual, and Tom Shippey (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2016), 17-33

Old English Metrical History and the Composition of Widsið

In an attempt to refute the traditional notion that portions of Widsið were composed before the a... more In an attempt to refute the traditional notion that portions of Widsið were composed before the adventus Saxonum, Eric Weiskott recently resurrected a dating method employed by early twentieth-century literary historians, which consists of
checking the forms that the half-lines of a poetic text would have had in prehistoric Old English against the well-known four-position rule of historical verse construction in order to establish a terminus a quo for its composition. This method is thus predicated on the assumption that the four-position principle obtained before the occurrence of certain prehistoric sound changes. The present essay advances a series of arguments that demonstrate that the four-position rule is the result of the evolution of the Old English language, and that it is therefore wrong to assume that it was already operative in the prehistory of Old English.

On a Crux in Beowulf: The Alliteration of Finite Verbs and the Scribal Understanding of Metre

Because of its faulty alliteration and irregular metrical configuration, the manuscript reading f... more Because of its faulty alliteration and irregular metrical configuration, the manuscript reading felasinniġne secg, corresponding to l. 1379a of Beowulf, has traditionally been emended to sinniġne secg by most editors of the poem, who have thus regarded fela as a scribal interpolation. As the editors of Klaeber IV have suggested, the rationale behind such an interpolation probably is that the scribe mistook 1378b, ðǣr þū findan miht, and 1379a as a verse pair, thereby introducing fela in order to remedy the lack of f alliteration. This is a credible hypothesis, since the initial consonant of the word interpolated by the scribe into 1379a alliterates with that of findan in 1378b. Why the scribe should have failed to recognize 1379b, sēċ ġif þū dyrre, as the pair of 1379a in the first place, however, remains an unresolved crux in Beowulf textual criticism. The present essay argues that because of his deficient understanding of the principles of verse construction, the scribe was unable to recognize the finite verb sēċ as the legitimate alliterative link of l. 1379a. By virtue of their intermediate prosodic status, the metrical behaviour of finite verbs, unlike that of stress-words and proclitics, is variable. Such variability is governed by a series of metrical rules whose ultimate rationale is the preservation of the four-position structure of the verse. If the scribe was ignorant of the four-position principle, as this essay argues, then he would have lacked the ability to scan the finite verb sēċ correctly. It is this inability to scan sēċ that would have led him to prefer the pairing of 1378b and 1379a, despite their failure to alliterate, to the pairing of 1379a and 1379b. Besides positing a new metrical rule that has not been fully articulated in previous scholarship, this essay explores the crucial implications that the scribes’ deficient understanding of Old English metre has for textual criticism.

The Language of Beowulf and the Conditioning of Kaluza's Law

by Leonard Neidorf and Rafael J. Pascual

In Beowulf, there are 106 verses in which second compound elements are unambiguously distributed ... more In Beowulf, there are 106 verses in which second compound elements are unambiguously distributed into positions of resolution or non-resolution on the basis of etymological length distinctions that became phonologically indistinct early in the Anglo-Saxon period. The conditioning behind this linguistic regularity (Kaluza's law) has been the subject of considerable dispute. R. D. Fulk argued that this regularity was phonologically conditioned: the Beowulf poet consistently distinguished between etymologically long and short desinences because he composed before they became phonologically indistinct. Some scholars have sought to explain this regularity by proposing that it was semantically or morphologically conditioned, while others have invoked oral tradition and narrative considerations in their efforts to explain it. The present article gauges the relative probability of these competing hypotheses and demonstrates that the hypothesis of phonological conditioning is the only tenable explanation. It is therefore probable that Beowulf was composed in Mercia prior to the year 725, by which time distinctions of etymological length had become phonologically indistinct.

Ælfric's Rhythmical Prose and the Study of Old English Metre

A decade ago, Thomas A. Bredehoft designed a new theory of Old English metre that classified Ælfr... more A decade ago, Thomas A. Bredehoft designed a new theory of Old English metre that classified Ælfric of Eynsham's rhythmical-alliterative texts as verse. The present article submits Bredehoft's metrical theory to critical scrutiny by means of three case studies. The first deals with Bredehoft's case for simplicity in metrical argumentation; the second assesses the theoretical validity of Bredehoft's exclusively syllabic substitute for the traditional four-position principle; and the third focuses on Bredehoft's metrical system for late Old English metre and its application to Ælfric's rhythmical-alliterative texts. These three case studies demonstrate that Bredehoft's theory is empirically insufficient, since it is unable to account for significant distributional patterns that occur in the surviving manuscripts. Bredehoft's claim about Ælfric's rhythmical texts is therefore devoid of meaning, since it is predicated on the untenable principles of his metrical theory. The essay concludes by characterizing Ælfric's rhythmical-alliterative style as a particular manner of prose composition informed by the didactic temper that obtained during Æthelred's reign.

Three-Position Verses and the Metrical Pratice of the Beowulf Poet

This article assesses the authenticity of the three-position SS verse type in Beowulf on the bas... more This article assesses the authenticity of the three-position SS verse type in Beowulf on the basis of its unambiguous incidence both in Beowulf and in a larger corpus of Old English poetry. The first part of this essay examines the metrical configuration of thirteen verses from Beowulf that have recently been identified as instances of the SS pattern. In doing so, it demonstrates that nearly all of them furnish a standard four-position metrical structure. The second part discusses the empirical obstacles to accepting the formal legitimacy of the three-position SS pattern in Old English verse, thereby reaffirming the validity of the stricture of traditional Sieversian metrics against verses consisting of less than four metrical positions.

S. Pons-Sanz, The Lexical Effects of Anglo-Scandinavian Linguistic Contact on Old English

J. Terasawa, Old English Metre: An Introduction

Literatura Nórdica Medieval

by Miguel González Plaza and Rafael J. Pascual