ccbddbeebg), in the latter the same rime (a a b a abccbddbg), cp. e.g. Lib. Desc. st. 50: þey riden ever west In þat wilde forest Toward Sinadoune, bey niste what ham was best, And migt nougt come to toune, þey digte a logge of leves Wip swordes brigt and broune: bat was of fair fasoune. NOTE. It is wrong to assume (e.g. Schipper EM. I, 359) that in some romances the twelve-line tail-rime stanza could be interchanged with stanzas with six, nine and fifteen lines; for there were no nine-line and fifteen-line tail-rime stanzas. Where we find such a mixture in MSS., the fault lies not with the poets, but with the reciters and scribes, who occasionally overlooked a part of a stanza or disturbed the stanza series by altering the rime etc. Wherever we have several MSS. of any romance it is easy to reconstruct the twelve-line stanza for the whole poem; cp. my edition of Libeaus Desconus (Altengl. Bibl. V, Heilbronn 1890). § 179. The Eight-line and Sixteen-line Tail-rime Stanzas. In some lyrics, e.g. Böddeker, W.L. 10, and in Mysteries and Moralities as late as the sixteenth century, we find an eight-line tail-rime stanza, aaabcccb; in the romances Sir Perceval, Sir Degrevant and The Avowyng of Arthur, further in the Disputisoun bytwene a Cristenemon and a Jew (Vernon MS., EETS 117) we find a sixteenline tail-rime stanza, a a abcccbdddbeeeb. Both stanzas come from the alliterative verse, as Luick (Anglia 13, 437 ff.) has shown; the triplets in both parts of the stanzas correspond in their rhythmical structure to the first half-line of the alliterative verse, and the tail-rime verse to the shorter second half-line. That is why we find so much alliteration in these stanzas. Luick, of course, assigns two beats to the verses (§ 157); but, from what has been said in § 158 f., we must assign four beats (or members) to the triplets and three to the tail-rime verses; cp. Böddeker, W.L. 10: Ich ot a bourde in | boure | bryht, In all bis wúrhliche | won A burde of | blod | and of | bon, Lússomòre in londe, or Sir Degrevant (Thornton Romances, Camden Soc.) st. 2: With king | Ártòur y | wene And with Gwénnòur þe | quene That cómeliche | knight. For hérdy and wight, He was dóughty and dere Ther he of dedis | might y here Be dayes or be | night. For thy they | name | hem that | stounde, A knight of the | tabull | rounde, As maked is in the mappe mounde In stórỳe full | right. A quarter of such a stanza together with the preceding tail-rime verse answers to the five-line conclusion of the thirteen-line alliterative stanza (§ 175), cdddc, so that we must assume a close relationship between them. § 180. The Octovian Stanza: a a aba b. We must look on the stanza of the Sth. Engl. Octovian: a a a, b2 a b2 as another form of the sixline anisometrical tail-rime stanza of the form a a b2 a a b2 (§ 177), in which one of the a-verses has been changed from the second to the first couplet; e.g. Octovian was emperour Of all Rome and the honour; Of chivalrie he hadde the flour That any man wiste. Here of a nobill conquerour Ye mowe liste. The same stanza is met with in Heimliche Liebe (Schipper Übungsbuch, 8th ed. p. 155), in De Creatione Mundi (Anglia II) etc.; in NE. in Campbell's Hallowed Ground and frequently in Scotch verse, e.g. in Burns (§ 235). c) The Late Middle English Period (1370-1500). § 181. The Development of Prosody in the late ME. Period. In the third period of ME. Chaucer is the great pioneer. He introduced the heroic verse (§ 186 ff.) and the seven-line stanza (§ 194), and prepared the way for the greater regularity of NE. verse by his strict observance of rhythmical laws. In the course of the fifteenth century the verse structure again became unsettled (cp. Lydgate § 197) owing to linguistic alterations, particularly owing to the fact that final e gradually became silent, until finally the greater regularity of the verse structure, for which Chaucer had prepared the way, was established in the sixteenth century, when final e became completely silent. § 182. Chaucer's Short Rimed Couplet. In his earliest poems, The Book of the Duchesse (1369/70) and his translation of the Roman de la Rose, and once again later in House of Fame (c. 1384), Chaucer uses the regular short rimed couplet (§ 122 f.), which he also found in French verse; but he tried to make the verse more regular than it had been. Sometimes the anacrusis is wanting, but an unstressed syllable between two stressed syllables is never omitted. Further disyllabic anacrusis and the use of two unstressed syllables between the stressed syllables is avoided, or at least softened by elision or slurring. Moreover the verse seems to be mainly iambic, i.e. the foot begins with an unstressed syllable, and is no longer, as earlier, (§ 123) mainly trochaic; cp. BD 44 ff.: So whan I saw | I might not slepe Til now late, this other night| Then play en either | at chesse | or tables. § 183. Rime-breaking and Enjambement. To avoid the monotony of the short rimed couplet Chaucer frequently uses rime-breaking, i.e. he closes the sentence with the first verse of a couplet (§ 167). The section quoted above (§ 182) begins with the second and ends with the first verse of a couplet. The next section begins: And in this book were writen fables, cp. also 1. 28 ff.: Suche fantasyes been in myn hede But men myghte axe me why so My selven can not telle why The sothe; but trewely as I gesse, etc. cp. also BD 15f. 61f. 75f. 89f. 107f. 121 f. etc. HF 65 f. 127 f. 133f. 139 f. 161f. 173 f. etc. |