I must beg to differ with you on the feasibility of doing an alliterative 4-stress line in modern English. See my website, alliteration.net, which collects hundreds of examples of successful alliterative poetry in modern English, and especially my article in issue 4 of my journal of alliterative verse, "Varieties of Alliterative Meter", in which I argue that there are alliteration patterns that are more natural to modern English rhythm than the traditional Old-English pattern, which requires alliteration on the 3rd stress, or head-stave.
Thanks for commenting. Rest assured that I do think it is feasible to use alliterative verse (or as I like to call it, chyming verse) in modern English, whether by keeping or bending the original rules. There are a few examples on this blog but this is my main post on the subject:
My advocacy of 'blank verse' in this post has to do with the special case of translating Homeric and South Slavic poetry. These poems are composed according to oral-traditional formulas, often repeated without much variation, and holding to rules that serve to force variation in every line would prevent the translator from reproducing them consistently and accurately. For example, if I choose to translate the Homeric formula "pod' ookus Akhilleus" as "fleetfoot Achilles", I would not be able to use it everywhere Homer does without changing either that phrase or others elsewhere in the line. (Of course the normal solution is to translate more roughly, but I find it important to reproduce the formulas; see here for the reasoning behind this: https://jacklaurel.substack.com/p/poetry-without-writing)
Good point about translating oral formulas! The alliterative tradition kind of did the inverse ... develop multiple formulas and varieties of kennings to make it easier to alliterate.
I do recall subscribing to that with one of my email accounts. I've had your site bookmarked for a few years now, learned a lot from it.
The built-in variation in this tradition (as you say, the inverse of the Greek and South Slavic ones) never seemed to bother the oral theorists, but it gives me a lot of food for thought. It must represent either a form of composition-in-performance that worked on different principles, or a memorized poetry for shorter lays, or a literary tradition that preserves a lot of oral-formulaic language. It's no academic question to me, as I am trying to revive preliterate techniques, quixotic as that might seem.
A very subtle way to poeticize a story. I.e. to return to the origins of poetics (as per Aristotle, anyway.)
I must beg to differ with you on the feasibility of doing an alliterative 4-stress line in modern English. See my website, alliteration.net, which collects hundreds of examples of successful alliterative poetry in modern English, and especially my article in issue 4 of my journal of alliterative verse, "Varieties of Alliterative Meter", in which I argue that there are alliteration patterns that are more natural to modern English rhythm than the traditional Old-English pattern, which requires alliteration on the 3rd stress, or head-stave.
Thanks for commenting. Rest assured that I do think it is feasible to use alliterative verse (or as I like to call it, chyming verse) in modern English, whether by keeping or bending the original rules. There are a few examples on this blog but this is my main post on the subject:
https://jacklaurel.substack.com/p/anglo-saxon-rhythms
My advocacy of 'blank verse' in this post has to do with the special case of translating Homeric and South Slavic poetry. These poems are composed according to oral-traditional formulas, often repeated without much variation, and holding to rules that serve to force variation in every line would prevent the translator from reproducing them consistently and accurately. For example, if I choose to translate the Homeric formula "pod' ookus Akhilleus" as "fleetfoot Achilles", I would not be able to use it everywhere Homer does without changing either that phrase or others elsewhere in the line. (Of course the normal solution is to translate more roughly, but I find it important to reproduce the formulas; see here for the reasoning behind this: https://jacklaurel.substack.com/p/poetry-without-writing)
Good point about translating oral formulas! The alliterative tradition kind of did the inverse ... develop multiple formulas and varieties of kennings to make it easier to alliterate.
BTW, you might want to consider joining the email forum I have on my site. From your posts, it seems like you'd feel right at home with the other people there! ... the join link is https://gaggle.email/join/forgotten-ground-regained@gaggle.email
I do recall subscribing to that with one of my email accounts. I've had your site bookmarked for a few years now, learned a lot from it.
The built-in variation in this tradition (as you say, the inverse of the Greek and South Slavic ones) never seemed to bother the oral theorists, but it gives me a lot of food for thought. It must represent either a form of composition-in-performance that worked on different principles, or a memorized poetry for shorter lays, or a literary tradition that preserves a lot of oral-formulaic language. It's no academic question to me, as I am trying to revive preliterate techniques, quixotic as that might seem.