The Idea of Alliterative Poetry: Alliterative Meter and Piers Plowman.

The Siege of Jerusalem supports Duggan’s argument for aa/ax as the only alliterative pattern allowed by the poets, his contention that alliteration was not designed to fall on unstressed syllables, and his use of “syntactic frames” to determine metrical and unmetrical b-verse types. There is less manuscript support, however, for Duggan’s claim that the PPl line operated on the basis of the same three principles. A systematic re-examination of “the origins of the alliterative revival” is needed. PPl may demonstrate a transmission from OE poetic practice “in which prose and poetry were already mixed.”