Paul Edwin Zimmer's alliterative style: A metrical legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien and Poul Anderson

Abstract

[...] I'd also like to highlight the long (but insufficiently recognized) shadows of influence cast by Tolkien and Anderson, especially within speculative fiction. [...] we get lines such as The Virginia governor, Lord Dunmore, Cast covetous eyes on Ohio land. [...]in that same finale, we read that American rebel "preachers have taught the Oneida well: / Who stands for the King takes the road to Hell" (284). A further influence from ancient alliterative meter comes through Zimmer's high rate of trochaic stress patterns in lieu of iambic ones. Because of inflection on nouns and verbs, what syllable-counting metricists would today call "trochees" came more naturally to Old English and Old Norse, which explains why alliterative poetry in those languages most commonly resorted to the lift-dip pattern of A-type verses.