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Nicolay Yakovlev’s Theory of Old English Meter: a Reassessment

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Abstract

This article gauges the plausibility of Nicolay Yakovlev’s theory of Old English meter. Although he accepts the four-position principle of Eduard Sievers, Yakovlev dissents from the Sieversian tradition by arguing that morphology determines the invariable metrical behavior of every element, that there are no intermediate levels of ictus, and that alliteration is not a structural feature of Old English versification. Yakovlev’s innovations are intended to simplify the Sieversian tradition, but we demonstrate that they actually result in a metrical system that is excessively complex, theoretically incoherent, and empirically inadequate.

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Notes

  1. On the relationship between Sieversian metrics and textual criticism, see Neidorf (2016); for its bearing on relative chronology, see Fulk (1992) and Neidorf (2017: §§4–8).

  2. See, for example, Kaluza (1896), Krackow (1903), Kuhn (1933), Fulk (1992), Terasawa (1994), and Pascual (2015).

  3. For an extended review of these two monographs, see Pascual (2018).

  4. For a detailed account of Fulk’s refinements to Sievers’s theory, see Pascual (2016b).

  5. Accounts of the four-position principle can be found in Pascual (2013–2014, 2014: 811–815; 2017a). On its historical development, see, for example, Fulk (1996b: 68) and Pascual (2016a).

  6. Following Yakovlev’s practice, all of the examples used in this essay will be adduced from Beowulf. We consistently cite the poem by line number from the edition of Fulk et al. (2008).

  7. For the standard account, see Campbell (1959: §88).

  8. The hypothetical *frōd cyning þrīo wicg is syntactically patterned on real verses like 653a, Hrōðgār Bēowulf, consisting of Subject and Direct Object. The phrase frōd cyning (nominative singular) occurs in l. 1306b, Þā wæs frōd cyning, and þrīo wicg (accusative plural) occurs in 2174b, þrīo wicg somod. The hypothetical *snotor guma bēah ġeaf is likewise made up of elements that occur in the poem: l. 1384a, Ne sorga, snotor guma, and 1719b, nallas bēagas ġeaf. That verses such as these do not occur is therefore attributable to the reality of ictus subordination within the Old English half-line.

  9. See Cable (1974: 65–74) and Fulk (2002: 335–340).

  10. To be sure, the sequence SS, as in gōd ðeġn, occurs verse-finally in late poetry, but never in metrically conservative poems like Beowulf (see Fulk 1992: §291), for which Yakovlev’s theory aims to account. Second compound elements, like -ðeġn in healðeġn, never occur in the verse-internal drop of type B verses, a location generally reserved for unambiguously unstressed syllables.

  11. The vocalism of participial -end indicates lack of phonological stress (see Fulk 1992: §263). That the stress on the deuterotheme of a dithematic name is weaker than that on the second element of a compound word is suggested most clearly by the failure of dithematic names to participate systematically in the line’s alliteration.

  12. On Kaluza’s law, see Fulk (1992: §§170–183) and Neidorf and Pascual (2014).

  13. For a full list of verses featuring either resolution or its suspension under secondary stress in Beowulf, see Bliss (1967: 27–30).

  14. Old English wine, an i-stem, descends from prehistoric Old English *winĭ, while draca, an n-stem, descends from *drakō. On the length of desinences in prehistoric Old English and Germanic, see Fulk (2018: 79–87).

  15. On the mutually confirming relationship between Kaluza’s law and Sievers’s assumptions about verse construction, see, for example, Fulk (1996a: 6–7, 1997: 41–42, 2002: 335–341, 2007: 140–141) and Pascual (2018: 224–225; forthcoming).

  16. Lines 563b and 907a are particle verses, that is, verses that consist exclusively of linguistic elements that may be variably ictic or non-ictic depending on their position within the clause. For a detailed study of this type of verse, see Fulk (2016).

  17. The connection between alliteration and meter is further explored in Pascual (2017b).

  18. Cf. Weiskott: “[Yakovlev’s] proposition that the meter was morphological, not accentual, is as original as it is clarifying” (2016: 25).

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Correspondence to Leonard Neidorf or Rafael J. Pascual.

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Neidorf, L., Pascual, R.J. Nicolay Yakovlev’s Theory of Old English Meter: a Reassessment. Neophilologus 104, 245–253 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-019-09624-7

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