The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne: A Critical Edition (Anniversary Collection) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 081227587X ISBN 13: 9780812275872

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017

Synopsis

This anonymous Middle English poem of the late fourteenth century, a central work in the Arthurian group, is an important example of the tradition known as the "alliterative revival" and is one of a group of poems having Sir Gawain as hero. Its metrical form is the most intricate in Middle English Romance, including rhyme, alliteration, and stanza-linking. The stanza consists of nine long alliterative lines rhyming ababababc and a "wheel" of four shorter lines rhyming dddc. In this first critical edition based on all four extant manuscripts, Robert J. Gates has contributed careful commentary with extensive critical apparatus. He attempts to reconstruct original readings that have been lost in one or more of the manuscripts. His glossary, however, uses words from the variant readings as well as those accepted in the edited text. Using the editorial methods developed by George Kane in his edition of Piers Plowman, Gates gives abundant new evidence of the usefulness of these methods. He believes that the edition shows that written poems could be formulaic and that scribes often substituted readings consisting of formulaic whole or half lines.

About this title

About the Author:

GatesRobert J.: Robert J. Gates is Professor Emeritus of English at Syracuse University.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 081227587X
• ISBN 13: 9780812275872
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280
• Editor: Gates Robert J.