ABSTRACT
The structure of the a-verse in Middle English alliterative meter remains unclear. One of the most controversial issues concerns the maximum length of a dip. Judith Jefferson and Ad Putter have argued that an a-verse can have an “extra-long” dip that consists of four or more unstressed syllables, while Noriko Inoue and Myra Stokes have advanced evidence to suggest that a four-syllable limit on dip length may normally be operative in the a-verse. This article examines a-verses in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and show that all the possible instances of a five- or six-syllable dip can be reinterpreted as having two, three, or four syllables, and that in these instances the extra-long dip can be broken up by a beat in the middle. The article concludes that dips that can be considered extra-long are in fact rare in the Gawain poet’s poems.
