A Unified Account of the Old English Metrical Line

222 Pages·2017·15.555 MB·English

by  Andrew Cooper

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
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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.

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