Research into rhyme and repetition has delved deeply into early and mid-fourteenth-century poetry, the material in fashion before Langland, Gower, and Chaucer remodeled poetics. This period, often referred to as "middle Middle English," includes poets like the Gawain-poet, who shares many formal affiliations with poetry from the 1330s, 1340s, and 1350s. The scholarship of Thorlac Turville-Petre, Susanna Fein, and Ad Putter has been invaluable in understanding this era.
One "middle Middle English" trend is stanza-linking or concatenation, where one stanza links to the next by repeating words from the last line of one stanza in the first line of the next. This technique connects the poem stanza by stanza, forming a chain or catena. This differs from repetition within a stanza, referred to here as iteration. Stanza-linking is probably what Robert Mannyng describes as "enterlace" in Story of England (trans. 1327 to 1338), where he contrasts complex poetics with simpler forms.
The origins of stanza-linking are not entirely clear. French chansons de geste often link the end of one laisse (a verse paragraph with identical assonance) to the next using repeated words or phrases. This technique marks a shift (one assonance giving way to another) while maintaining narrative continuity. A similar approach, called cyrch-gymeriad, appears in early Welsh poetry to connect individual englynion into a longer sequence.
In "middle Middle English," stanza-linking appears across various forms and subjects, including religious, satiric, and political lyrics (e.g., Harley 2253 lyrics) and narrative forms like tail-rhyme and stanzaic-alliterative verse. In narratives, it might serve functional purposes, helping reciters and scribes track stanzas. However, its inconsistent application in tail-rhyme narratives, except for Sir Perceval of Galles, suggests a more aesthetic role. In Perceval, strict stanza-linking may amplify the poem's parodic elements, emphasizing formal complexity.
Stanza-linking is most consistently found in short lyrics, often combined with alliteration, rhyme, or "total consonance" (as described by Ad Putter ). This suggests an aesthetic and conceptual function, enriching the poem with internal echoes.
Stanza-linking serves a role similar to refrains in later poetry by explicitly connecting stanzas. It preemptively addresses the potential separation caused by changes in rhyme, acting as a gravitational force to maintain cohesion. Without stanza-linking or a refrain, the connection between stanzas relies solely on structural repetition.
In Pearl, concatenation links stanzas together like beads in a necklace or links in a chain, although not in a simple one-to-one manner. Groups of five (or six) stanzas are linked, creating inertia that resists the impulse to move on. This repetition functions as both stanza-linking and refrain, uniting earlier traditions with later trends.
The repeated link words in Pearl produce twenty "lyrics" that keep the reader focused on one section before progressing. Refrains may repeat a word or phrase, or even an entire line, emphasizing progression, description, or argument. Examples include the dreamer and maiden sharing a refrain "grounde of alle my blysse" and the maiden's lyric centered on "For the grace of God is gret innoghe."
The groups of stanzas in Pearl are often referred to as passus (Latin for "step" or "section"), as seen in Langland's Piers Plowman. However, whether the Pearl-poet used this term is unclear. These groups ingeniously combine stanza-linking and refrains, achieving lyric balance within a narrative structure.