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Unlike Ælfric's *Lives...*, which are indubitably verse.
CW
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I think a better case can be made for Wulfstan.
But it's a contentious issue, and for all of me, though I don't entirely
agree, the most interesting case was made by Rosemary Huisman in +the
written poem+.
But there's a serious tripwire here across the MS/print divide.
Basics would of course be Cynewulf and Cynheard in the ASC.
Presented as MS prose but you can reverse-engineer back to an oral original
that sat smack on the verse/prose divide.
Or did it emerge from a point where the verse/prose distinction was more
blurred than now?
Whatever, I do think that there always *was* a distinction between verse and
prose -- whatever he is or isn't, Aelfric ain't the Beowulf poet --
different rules and constraints.
Langland ain't the Gawain Poet neither.
R.
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