Three Alliterative Saints’ Hymns: Late Middle English Stanzaic Poems

This edition presents the three extant texts of a largely unrecognised genre in Middle English verse: odes to saints written in strong-stress metre in fourteen-line stanzas. These hymns were composed in the North and East Midlandsin around 1400. This is the first edition of these linguistically difficult, ‘knotty’, poems for many years: they were previously edited separately in 1907 [re-edited, 1937], 1889 and 1921.

The new edition takes accountof recent scholarship on the Middle English alliterative verse tradition, and includes full discussion of the three poems’ hagiographical and historical context. RUTH KENNEDY is a Lecturer in English at Royal Holloway, University of London.