A Unified Account of the Old English Metrical Line PDF
Preview A Unified Account of the Old English Metrical Line
A UNIFIED ACCOUNT OF THE OLD ENGLISH METRICAL LINE Andrew Cooper A unified account of the Old English metrical line Andrew Cooper ©Andrew Cooper, Stockholm University 2017 ISBN print 978-91-7797-049-1 ISBN PDF 978-91-7797-050-7 Cover photo: The Kingston Brooch, courtesy of National Museums Liverpool. Printed in Sweden by Universitetsservice US-AB, Stockholm 2017. Distributor: English Department, Stockholm University. For and because of Lena Acknowledgements When fate causes a formless stone to fall into a river, how many grains of sand must brush past it before it becomes a shapely pebble? And how much more must it be carved and polished by skilled artisans before it can be fitted into the inlaid boss of a brooch? Many significant and beloved relatives, friends, teachers, colleagues and classmates have had indirect but nevertheless essen- tial influence on the formation of my mind, my interests and the education which eventually contributed to the completion of this project. It would be churlish to select individuals and otiose to attempt to list them all. No doubt an appropriate punishment can be found for my laxity in excluding them – nevertheless they are continually in my thoughts. Perhaps, perforce, a few of the shinier stones can be selected from the treasure-hoard for especial venera- tion. My principal thanks must be to my supervisors. I consider myself fortunate in the extreme that the beginning of my academic career coincided with the peak of Nils-Lennart Johannesson’s. His enthusiasm for the project and confidence in my abilities was matched only by his encyclopaedic knowledge of the source material and his generosity of spirit. I was supported and directed in the early part of the project by Alan McMillion, who also first recommended that I apply for the doctoral programme at a time before I had considered an advanced degree. The influence which Tomas Riad has had on this project can hardly be overstated: a spirit of cheerful optimism pervaded our regular super- vision sessions, punctuated only by his extremely precise and perceptive sur- gical strikes against the weak arguments, methodological dead ends, misun- derstandings of basic terminology and misleading formulations with which I would unfeelingly plague him. The English Department of Stockholm University provided as supportive and collegial a working environment as ever a chap could desire. I was fortunate to share my time as a doctoral student with an unusually large number of fel- lows in the same condition, both in the English department and in the other language departments. My classmates in the Special Doctoral School in Lin- guistics 2011–2012 all contributed both to my education in general and to the development of this text. These various brainboxes are shiny stones indeed and I look forward to seeing them rocket up the ranks of academia across the globe, a process which has already begun in earnest. All of us were supported and directed by the august council of linguists who made up the steering com- mittee, captained by the inestimable Masha Koptjevskaja Tamm. I was fortunate enough to be able to consult both Paul Kiparsky and Chris Golston during the early development of the project, and found their advice 1 on its direction invaluable. Earlier version of the text were weighed in the balance by Leena Kahlas-Tarkka and Patrik Bye, and their comments allowed for the final form to take shape. Beyza Björkman contributed much to the comprehensibility of the introduction, and Johan Sjöns provided a similar ser- vice for the Swedish summary. You have probably already noticed that the following text contains at least one error. I put it there by accident, in defiance of the advice of the worthy per- sonages named above. Take note, gentle reader, and take heart. 2
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