--- title: "Sawyer, Daniel. 2024. How to Read Middle English Poetry." description: "Its core chapters build upward, from single word choices through phrasing, metre, rhyme and stanzas to whole-poem form. 10 references." authors: ["Laurie Atkinson"] year: 2025 venue: "SELIM 30" source: "https://reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/SELIM/article/view/22262" licence: "CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; SELIM)" licence_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/" summary_licence: "Elamur Cosmic License" canonical: "https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/atkinson-2025-sawyer-daniel-2024-read-middle/" --- [Elamur Research](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/atkinson-2025-sawyer-daniel-2024-read-middle/) [home](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [papers](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/) / [2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2025/page/18/) / Sawyer, Daniel. 2024. How to Read Middle English Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 240. ISBN 9780198895237. # Sawyer, Daniel. 2024. How to Read Middle English Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 240. ISBN 9780198895237. **Authors:** Laurie Atkinson · **Year:** 2025 · **Venue:** [SELIM 30](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/selim-journal-of-the-spanish-society-for-medieval-english-language-and/) ([SELIM Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature 2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/venues/selim-journal-of-the-spanish-society-for-medieval-english-language-and/2025/)) · **Publisher:** [University of Oviedo](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/publishers/university-of-oviedo/) · **Licence:** [CC BY-NC-ND (journal licence per DOAJ; SELIM)](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) **Links:** [Publisher's page](https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.30.2025.267-71) · [PDF](https://reunido.uniovi.es/index.php/SELIM/article/download/22262/17169) · [OpenAlex](https://openalex.org/W4413083171) **Citations:** 0 citations (OpenAlex, 2026-10-14) ## Summary This item is a book review, not an NLP study. Laurie Atkinson (University of Tübingen) assesses Daniel Sawyer's 2024 beginner's guide to close reading Middle English verse. The reviewer says recent introductions to poetic form largely skip this period. Specialist studies, meanwhile, do not explain the verse systems to newcomers. Sawyer brings recent scholarship, notably on syntax and alliterative poetry, into one practical handbook. Its core chapters build upward, from single word choices through phrasing, metre, rhyme and stanzas to whole-poem form. Each chapter can also be read on its own. Later chapters cover manuscripts, multilingualism and oral performance. The examples deliberately reach beyond Chaucer, and Older Scots is treated as part of the same craft tradition. Atkinson praises the clear, non-condescending teaching and the pointers to free editions and reference tools. She questions the choice to transliterate medieval letters and notes the high price. Her verdict is that the book could become a standard teaching text. ## Key points - The book has 11 chapters. Chapter 1 covers why to read the verse, chapters 2–8 cover craft from words to overall form, and chapters 9–11 cover manuscripts and editing, multilingualism, and orality/aurality. An Appendix covers spelling, pronunciation and grammar, and an indexed Glossary defines terms. - The periodisation runs from roughly 1100/1150 to 1450/1500, with an early/late split near 1350. Middle English and Older Scots are handled together. - Less-taught examples include The Owl and the Nightingale (four-beat lines, ch. 4) and the Awntyrs off Arthure (alliterative-stanzaic verse, ch. 5). Others are the Harley lyrics (tail-rhyme, ch. 7), Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes stanza 1 (syntax, ch. 2), and Sir Orfeo (cumulative subordination). - The book discusses the uses and limits of several reference tools: the Middle English Dictionary, the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, the OED, and both the New and the Digital Indexes of Middle English Verse. It also lists digital manuscript facsimiles. - The reviewer's criticisms are these: - Thorn, eth, yogh and ash are transliterated instead of kept. - The hardback costs £70. - She suggests releasing the Appendix and Glossary as Open Access. ## Interesting ideas - The book's analysis climbs a ladder (word, phrase, metre, rhyme, stanza, whole form), yet each rung can be studied in isolation, which makes both staged learning and targeted lookup easy. - No single formal feature should carry a whole interpretation; effects usually arise when several features reinforce each other or pull against each other. - Two varieties that are usually taught separately (Middle English and Older Scots) are treated as one tradition, with their points of difference stated explicitly. - The reviewer weighs normalising archaic letters for beginners against keeping them so readers recognise the originals later. The book also warns against reading too much into copyists' spellings. - A stanza is first read for word order and then reread for layers of subordination, so the same text is revisited with a new structural lens each time. ## For Mova How these ideas could serve Mova, our small open language model — its files, stages and tests: - **I1** (learn): Training and evaluation suites could be ordered the same way, from token to clause to discourse level. Each level would stay self-contained so a failure can be traced to one layer. - **I2** (frames): Irony and implicature detection could require agreement or explicit tension among several explainable cues, rather than firing on one trigger. - **I3** (tree): Dialect conversion between treebanks could follow this pattern, using one shared core analysis plus a small, documented list of divergences. - **I4** (tokens): The tokenizer could normalise variant spellings for analysis while keeping the original surface form attached, so downstream steps neither depend on nor lose orthographic noise. - **I5** (tree): Parser debugging could run separate passes over the same sentence, one for linear order and one for embedding depth, to show where attachment errors appear. *Our summary of the paper, in our own words — not its text. The work belongs to its authors; read it at the links above.* ## Institutions - [University of Tübingen](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/universities/university-of-tubingen/) — University, Tübingen, Germany · 78 works · 41,280 citations 📚 Shelves (3): [🎭 Arts and Humanities](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/) · 17,450 works · [🗣️ Language and Linguistics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/language-and-linguistics/) · 17,296 works · [🎭 Classics](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/shelves/arts-and-humanities/classics/) · 116 works 🧭 Topics (2): [English](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/english/) · 2,379 works · [⏳ Historical linguistics & language change](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/topics/language-change/) · 250 works ## Cite Cite as: Laurie Atkinson. 2025. Sawyer, Daniel. 2024. How to Read Middle English Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 240. ISBN 9780198895237. SELIM 30. The paper itself, not this page. BibTeX from the library's record of the work. ```bibtex @inproceedings{atkinson2025sawyer, title = {{Sawyer, Daniel. 2024. How to Read Middle English Poetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 240. ISBN 9780198895237.}}, author = {Laurie Atkinson}, booktitle = {SELIM 30}, year = {2025}, doi = {10.17811/selim.30.2025.267-71}, url = {https://doi.org/10.17811/selim.30.2025.267-71} } ``` - [← previous Saudi-Alignment Benchmark: Assessing LLMs Alignment with Cultural Norms and Domain Knowledge in the Saudi Context](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/alhassoun-2025-saudi-alignment-benchmark-assessing-llms/) - [next → Scaling Arabic Medical Chatbots Using Synthetic Data: Enhancing Generative AI with Synthetic Patient Records](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/allam-2025-scaling-arabic-medical-chatbots-using/) - [↑ back to papers of 2025](https://md.research.elamur.ai/free/en/papers/2025/page/18/) ## References 10 references, 0 of them with a card of ours. ↗ leads to the work, «find» searches for one we have no id for yet. 1. Boffey, Julia, and Anthony S. G. Edwards, eds. 2023. The Oxford History of Poetry in English: Volume 3: Medieval Poetry 1400–1500. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Boffey%2C+Julia%2C+and+Anthony+S%2E+G%2E+Edwards%2C+eds%2E+2023%2E+The+Oxford+History+of+Poetry+in+English%3A+Volume+3%3A+Medieval+Poetry+1400%E2%80%931500%2E+Oxford%3A+Oxford+University+Press%2E) 2. Burrow, John A., and Thorlac Turville-Petre. 2005. A Book of Middle English. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Burrow%2C+John+A%2E%2C+and+Thorlac+Turville%2DPetre%2E+2005%2E+A+Book+of+Middle+English%2E+3rd+ed%2E+Oxford%3A+Blackwell%2E) 3. Cooper, Helen, and Robert R. Edwards, eds. 2023. The Oxford History of Poetry in English: Volume 2. Medieval Poetry: 1100–1400. Oxford: Oxford University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Cooper%2C+Helen%2C+and+Robert+R%2E+Edwards%2C+eds%2E+2023%2E+The+Oxford+History+of+Poetry+in+English%3A+Volume+2%2E+Medieval+Poetry%3A+1100%E2%80%931400%2E+Oxford%3A+Oxford+University+Press%2E) 4. Craigie, William A., ed. 1937. A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue: from the Twelfth Century to the End of the Seventeenth. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Craigie%2C+William+A%2E%2C+ed%2E+1937%2E+A+Dictionary+of+the+Older+Scottish+Tongue%3A+from+the+Twelfth+Century+to+the+End+of+the+Seventeenth%2E+Chicago%3A+The+University+of+Chicago+Press%2E) 5. Greenham, David. 2019. Close Reading: The Basics. Abingdon: Routledge. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Greenham%2C+David%2E+2019%2E+Close+Reading%3A+The+Basics%2E+Abingdon%3A+Routledge%2E) 6. Hodgson, Andrew. 2021. The Cambridge Guide to Reading Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Hodgson%2C+Andrew%2E+2021%2E+The+Cambridge+Guide+to+Reading+Poetry%2E+Cambridge%3A+Cambridge+University+Press%2E) 7. Lester, Godfrey A. 1996. The Language of Old and Middle English Poetry. Basingstoke: Macmillan. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Lester%2C+Godfrey+A%2E+1996%2E+The+Language+of+Old+and+Middle+English+Poetry%2E+Basingstoke%3A+Macmillan%2E) 8. Kurath, Hans, Sherman M. Kuhn, and Robert E. Lewis, eds. 1952–2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. [http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/). [↗](http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/) 9. Mooney, Linne R., Daniel W. Mosser, and Elizabeth Solopova. n.d. “Digital Index of Middle English Verse.” [http://www.dimev.net/](http://www.dimev.net/). Proffitt, Michael, ed. 1990–. The Oxford English Dictionary. 3rd ed. www.oed.com. [↗](http://www.dimev.net/) 10. Turville-Petre, Thorlac. 2007. Reading Middle English Literature. Oxford: Blackwell. [find](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=Turville%2DPetre%2C+Thorlac%2E+2007%2E+Reading+Middle+English+Literature%2E+Oxford%3A+Blackwell%2E) *Updated 2 November 2026*