Old English and Middle English Poetry. Derek Pearsall

1979 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 188-191
Author(s):  
Stanley B. Greenfield
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Middle English Poetry

scholarly journals Null subjects in Middle English

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 439-473 ◽  
Author(s):  
GEORGE WALKDEN ◽  
KRISTIAN A. RUSTEN
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Old English ◽  
Complete Disappearance ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Middle English Poetry ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Shed Light

This article investigates the occurrence and distribution of referential null subjects in Middle English. Whereas Modern English is the textbook example of a non-null-subject language, the case has recently been made that Old English permits null subjects to a limited extent, which raises the question of what happens in the middle period. In this article we investigate Middle English using data drawn from thePenn–Helsinki Parsed Corpus of Middle English Proseand the newParsed Corpus of Middle English Poetry, aiming to shed light on the linguistic and extralinguistic factors conditioning the alternation between null and overt subjects. Generalized mixed-effects logistic regression and random forests are used to assess the importance of the variables included. We show that the set of factors at play is similar to that found for Old English, and we document a near-complete disappearance of the null subject option by the end of the Middle English period.

Reading English Verse in Manuscript c.1350-c.1500

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Sawyer
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
Geoffrey Chaucer ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
John Lydgate ◽  
Thomas Hoccleve ◽  
New Methods ◽  
English Verse ◽  
Middle English Poetry ◽  
History Of ◽  
Bodies Of Evidence

This volume offers the first book-length history of reading for Middle English poetry. Drawing on evidence from more than 450 manuscripts, it examines readers’ choices of material, their movements into and through books, their physical handling of poetry, and their attitudes to rhyme. It provides new knowledge about the poems of known writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Thomas Hoccleve by examining their transmission and reception together with a much larger mass of anonymous English poetry, including the most successful English poem before print, The Prick of Conscience. The evidence considered ranges from the weights and shapes of manuscripts to the intricate details of different stanza forms, and the chapters develop new methods which bring such seemingly disparate bodies of evidence into productive conversation with each other. Ultimately, this book shows how the reading of English verse in this period was bound up with a set of habitual but pervasive formalist concerns, which were negotiated through the layered agencies of poets, book producers, and other readers.

On the concept ‘popular’ in middle English poetry

1992 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
pp. 292-299
Author(s):  
Bradford Y. Fletcher ◽  
A. Leslie Harris
Keyword(s):  
Middle English ◽  
English Poetry ◽  
Middle English Poetry
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