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Form and Continuity in the Alliterative Tradition: Cruciform Design and Double Birth in Two Stanzaic Poems.

Form and Continuity in the Alliterative Tradition: Cruciform Design and Double Birth in Two Stanzaic Poems.

The Dispute between Mary and the Cross and The Foure Leues of the Trewlufe, both poems in thirteen-line stanzas employing alliteration, develop the planctus Mariae conventions with similar and apparently innovative poetic structures: both re-enact a metaphoric “birth” at the center with an actual opening of gates; both rely on chiasmic symmetry of paired antitheses and parallels as if to imitate the shape of the Cross; and both complete their expositions in exactly forty stanzas (forty symbolizing the fourness of the Cross’s shape and also representing the biblical period of exile in the wilderness).