1 - Sievers, Bliss, Fulk, and Old English Metrical Theory

Summary

Much of A History of Old English Meter (Fulk 1992) is concerned with chronological questions, and it is matters of chronology that have elicited the most fervent responses from critics and admirers alike. What has often been overlooked in its aftermath is the critical reassessment of Old English metrical theory that A History of Old English Meter also contains. In the introduction, for example, Fulk observed that the Beowulf poet's compliance with Kaluza's law provides firm indication that Sievers’ positional analysis of Old English meter is essentially correct (1992: §§26, 65, 69). Moreover, in chapter VII, in which he endeavored to gauge the chronological significance of the variable metrical behaviour of so-called tertiary stress, Fulk detected a regularity that led him to conclude that syllable quantity is more integral to the formation of metrical ictus than phonological stress (1992: §260), thereby making a significant revision to traditional Sieversian metrics. This conclusion, in conjunction with some distributional evidence from a large corpus of Old English poetry, allowed Fulk to demonstrate that Bliss's scansional system (for which see Bliss 1962 and 1967), despite its widespread use in the profession, is in actuality incompatible with Sievers’ and therefore fundamentally erroneous.

This crucial aspect of A History of Old English Meter, however, has either passed unnoticed or been misunderstood by the majority of Old English scholars. In one of the most visible elementary essays on Beowulfian meter, for instance, Robert P. Stockwell and Donka Minkova describe Fulk's work as “a triumph of the Sievers-Bliss-Cable tradition” (1997: 58), a statement that is not quite accurate in the light of Fulk's conclusions about metrical theory. A.J. Bliss cannot be regarded as the successor to Eduard Sievers if, as Fulk demonstrated, it is precisely Bliss's departures from Sievers that constitute the main flaws of Blissian metrics. Consequently, although it is fair to say that Fulk's work is a victory of Sievers, it is paradoxical to consider it also a triumph of Bliss. One factor that underlies the scholarly community’s failure to apprehend Fulk's views on Old English metrical theory is the fact that A History of Old English Meter, in part because of its title, has been taken to be a chronological study exclusively, and hence its theoretical component has been relegated to a second place.