ABSTRACT
Like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Alliterative Morte Arthure is an anonymous narrative poem and one of the masterpieces of the English Alliterative Revival. Unlike Sir Gawain, which incorporates end-rhyme and syllabic meter into its alliterative framework, the Morte Arthure maintains a purer alliterative form resembling that of Old English poetry: a fixed number of stresses (4) to a line (rather than a fixed number of syllables), of which at least two alliterate (ideally 3) and a varying number of unstressed syllables,1 giving the poem a plain, down-to-earth quality, in contrast to the refined and highly decorated stanzas of Sir Gawain.
