Chiefly alliterative words再考

概要

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Since the publication of Alliterative Poetry in Middle English by Oakden, the voluminous work has been an indispensable reference book for students of Middle English alliterative poetry. In the eighth chapter, in which he treats the vocabulary of alliterative poets, Oakden states that "a given word is chiefly alliterative, meaning thereby that it is found but rarely or even not at all, outside the alliterative poems" and regards 62 words as chiefly alliterative. He also presents 47 poetic words. As more than 70 years have passed since the publication, it is apparent that the work has many points which need modifications. In reviewing his opinions on the vocabulary of Middle English alliterative poetry, Middle English Dictionary (MED), completed in 2001, is an extremely useful and reliable tool for reviewers. The aim of this article is to examine the adequacy of Oakden's judgment on chiefly alliterative words and poetic words by analyzing the citations of MED and investigating the works excluded from his corpus, and to reclassify those words more accurately. As a result of the investigation, it becomes clear that some words have much wider currency than Oakden thought. A more accurate classification of Oakden's chiefly alliterative and poetic words can also be presented, which is necessarily a tentative one and in need of further investigations.
仙台大学の論文