A History of Old English Verse Layout

This study presents the first full history of Old English poetic mise-en-page, drawing its approach from the fields of literary criticism, art history, metrics, palaeography, and the history of the book. Paying special attention to lineation, this book surveys the layout of poetry from the earliest Latin writings in England, to modern editions of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It argues that the vernacular verse page is not, as has often been assumed, merely constrained by linguistic status. Rather, the layout of Old English poetry is shown to be the result of engaged scribal and editorial choices, and one of a set of tools used to meets readers’ needs and to express identities. Old English verse is not laid out "like prose,” but like Old English verse.

Rachel A. Burns is Associate Professor of Medieval English Literature in the Faculty of English at the University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford. She is the co-editor of Tradition and Innovation in Old English Metre (2022), and has published widely on Old English poetry.