established both standing and reserve units of the
army, and created the fi rst English navy. By 897, he
had established a system of burhs (boroughs) across
Wessex and halted the Viking advance.
Alfred was also an accomplished scholar. He helped
reestablish monasteries demolished by the Vikings
and founded a court school to educate noble chil-
dren. He vigorously promoted the use of the VERNAC-
ULAR, making English the offi cial language of the
court. He also personally translated a number of
works from their Latin original into Old English,
including BOETHIUS’s The CONSOLATION OF PHILOSOPHY,
Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, and
Pope Gregory the Great’s Dialogues and Pastoral Care
(for which he also wrote a metrical preface). He also
authorized the writing of the ANGLO-SAXON CHRONICLE
in the late 9th century, requiring that many copies be
made and distributed.
Alfred died at Wantage on October 26, 899. He was
buried at Hyde Abbey, where his remains stayed until
the Dissolution of the Monasteries.
See also METERS OF BOETHIUS, METRICAL PREFACE TO
THE PASTORAL CARE.
FURTHER READING
Turk, Milton Haight, ed. The Legal Code of Ælfred the Great.
- Reprint, Clark, N.J.: Lawbook Exchange, 2004.
“A L I S OU N ” (“ALYSOUN”) ANONYMOUS (1340)
This playful love poem is one of the many fi ne medi-
eval English lyrics found, in London’s British Museum
(MS Harley 2253), in a 13th-century manuscript. “Ali-
soun” has received a great deal of scholarly attention
both for its formal qualities and for the way the poet
responds to the traditions of medieval love poetry.
Striking features of the verses in “Alisoun” include
strong ALLITERATION and the rhythm created by varying
three or four stresses per line. Both contribute to the
rapid pace of the poem and to the effect hinted at in
the fi rst lines of the poem—that of a lover singing like
a bird in the springtime. The poem also has a complex
rhyme scheme that links together the STANZAs and
keeps up this smooth and rapid fl ow. The fi rst stanza
begins abab, bbbc, dddc, and the remaining three stan-
zas follow this pattern, with the last four lines of each
stanza making up the repeated REFRAIN.
“Alisoun” begins with a reference to springtime and
love, a trope common in medieval love poetry. From
this discussion of the renewal of nature and life, the
speaker moves directly to his love-longing for the fair-
est of all women, his Alisoun. Following the pattern
prescribed by the tradition of medieval love poetry, the
poet then discusses the lady’s physical beauty in the
second stanza, and the third stanza describes the
speaker’s sleeplessness and torment—his LOVESICKNESS
because of his longing for the lady. In the fi nal stanza,
the speaker worries that someone else may take away
his lady, and he begs her to listen to his plea.
A number of scholars have explored the relationship
between “Alisoun” and the tradition of medieval love
poetry by examining the poem’s connections to GEOF-
FREY CHAUCER. Though there is no clear evidence that
Chaucer knew the lyric, he was certainly familiar with
this type of poem. The fi rst lines of “Alisoun” clearly
draw upon the same tropes as the opening lines of The
CANTERBURY TALES. Further, Chaucer gives the heroines
of two of his tales the name Alisoun. The Alison of
“The MILLER’S PROLOGUE AND TALE” seems very like the
Alisoun of the lyric—a beautiful woman who excites
men’s passions. The Wife of Bath, also named Alisoun,
is an older version of the same character type. Chaucer
was not necessarily borrowing directly from the lyric,
however. The name Alisoun or Alysoun, including
variations on the name Alice, was commonly given to
middle-class female characters in Middle English liter-
ature. That observation has lead to interpretations of
the poem “Alisoun” that examine how the poet adapted
the conventions of COURTLY LOVE for a bourgeois lady.
Recent critical trends have also explored issues of
gender and sexuality in this poem. Alisoun is presented
as an object of male desire; the attributes catalogued by
the speaker are physical in nature and serve primarily
to attest to her sexual desirability. We learn specifi cally
about her “browe broune, hire eye blake,” the fairness
of her hair, the whiteness of her neck, and her “middel
smal ant wel ymake” [small waist and fi ne shape] (ll.
13–16). More explicitly sexual is the phrase “Geynest
vnder gore” (l. 37), meaning “fairest under clothing,”
which unmistakably refers to Alisoun’s genitalia.
Recent critics have discussed “Alisoun” in terms of the
speaker and reader as voyeur. Nevertheless, although6 “A L I S OU N ”