The volume provides a comprehensive study of the metre of the unrhymed poems of the Alliterative Revival. It includes detailed analysis and discussion of line endings, alliterative patterning, historical grammar, the relationship between linguistic stress and beat, and presents new discoveries regarding the metrical rules of the a-verse.

Readers interested in the metre and textual criticism of alliterative poems, such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Siege of Jerusalem and the Alexander fragments, will find this monograph 'an outstanding, scholarly, assured and important work' (Ruth Kennedy, Royal Holloway, University of London).