Affiliation:
1. Loyola University Chicago Chicago United States of America
Abstract
Abstract
The Middle English ABC of Aristotle is an alliterative abecedary poem that survives in fifteen manuscript copies dating between the mid-fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The most eccentric copy, bearing the greatest number of unique textual variants, is in London, British Library, Additional 60577, a commonplace book and miscellany of verse and prose known today as the ‘Winchester Anthology’. The Winchester copy of the ABC of Aristotle is distinguished from all others by changes to vocabulary, idiom, and prosody. The result is a unique redaction, illustrating the kind of literary composition that could be expected to grow out of late medieval English grammar schools. The Winchester redaction also expresses a shift in prosodic allegiance. The traditional alliterative line is subtly reshaped into an accentual-syllabic form.
Subject
Literature and Literary Theory,Linguistics and Language,Language and Linguistics
Reference37 articles.
1. Alexandre-Bidon, Danièle. 1989. “La lettre volée: Apprendre à lire à l’enfant au Moyen Âge”. Annales 44: 953–992.
2. Burrow, John A. and Thorlac Turville-Petre (eds.). 2018. Piers Plowman: The B-Version Archetype (Bx). PPEA Print Series 1. Raleigh, NC: The Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts.
3. Cable, Thomas. 2009. “Foreign Influence, Native Continuation, and Metrical Typology in Alliterative Lyrics”. In: Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter (eds.). Approaches to the Metres of Alliterative Verse. Leeds: Leeds Studies in English. 219–234.
4. Cannon, Christopher. 2016. From Literacy to Literature: England, 1300–1400. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5. Cornelius, Ian. 2017. Reconstructing Alliterative Verse: The Pursuit of a Medieval Meter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.