| This dissertation provides generic and stylistic analysis of the 16 poems which appear in the various manuscripts of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, among the entries from 937 to 1104. The poems have long been accepted as important links to early Middle English alliterative verse but have never been studied as a group. Often assumed to be examples of the deterioration of the Anglo-Saxon poetic tradition, the poems have great metrical and stylistic interest. As products of a literary culture which both subsumed and preserved the native poetic tradition, the Chronicle poems predictably display certain formal and thematic convergences.;Further, the Chronicle poems are the sole extant examples of the genre of historical panegyric in Old English. Examination of analogous panegyric verse from the Welsh bardic tradition suggests that the demand of the genre--the need to produce commemorative poetry which records and comments on current events--dictates the Chronicle poets' use of formal features such as structure, syntax, diction, meter, and motif.;The dissertation redefines the traditional categories which up to now grouped the Chronicle poems almost entirely on their metrical characteristics--on metrical similarities or dissimilarities relative to Beowulf and the like. A description of the poems according to genre, however, accounts for structural and metrical treatments which have previously been thought to indicate degeneration of the tradition of Anglo-Saxon prosody. These commemorative poems are thus examined according to their topics: victories; the deaths of kings; political affairs and public events.;The poems of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles are "The Battle of Brunanburh," "The Capture of the Five Boroughs," "The Accession of Edgar," "The Coronation of Edgar," "The Death of Edgar" (two versions), "The Destruction of the Monasteries," "The Death of Edward," "The Capture of Canterbury," "The Death of Prince Alfred," "The Death of Prince Edward," "The Death of Edward the Confessor," "The Marriage of Margaret," "The Marriage of Earl Ralph," "The Death of William," and "Opression." The discussion of the poems is concentrated on their style and structure in relation to genre. A metrical analysis of each poem is provided in an appendix. |
